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MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 



MY LIFE AND MY 
LECTURES 



LAMAR FONTAINE, C. E., Ph. D. 



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New York and WASHiNaxoN 
THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1908 



I wo Copies t(ec«5j.: j 

MAY 15 lyOB I 



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Copyright, 1908, by 
THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 



CONTENTS 

FAOK 

Introduction 9 

I 

Birthplace — Personal appearance — Educated in early 
years by a Polish exile — Sent to Onion Creek 
school — Run away from home — Stolen by In- 
dians 12 

II 

Parentage — Escapade with wild cats — Exploding 
" ghost " and " witch " theories — Visits to grand- 
parents — Partnership of my father with William 
Jacob Thompson — Protecting the government 
archives — Life with the Indians 18 

III 
Prestige as a marksman — The Flat-Head Indians — 
My encounter with a grizzly — Finding evidences 
of the " Cliff-Dwellers " — Walk home a distance 
of 750 miles after living three years with the 
Comanches 28 

IV 

Arrival home — Mistaken for an Indian — Tortured by 
wearing clothing and sleeping in beds — Jeers 
of neighborhood children — Sent to Professor 
Bingham's school 89 

V 

Parting with my mother — Run away from Professor 
Bingham's school — Home again — Sent to sea — 
Life on the Vincens — Return home in December, 
1846 — Join Perry's expedition to Japan in 1853 

— Explorations in the Far East 45 

3 



4 CONTENTS 

VI 

Enlist in Russian army — Siege of Sevastopol — Re- 
warded for marksmanship — Back to Austin — 
Death of my mother — Explorations in Central 
and South America — Enlistment in Confederate 
army at Pensacola 59 

VII 

Life in camp — Opening guns of the war — The first 
battle — My father's bravery — Intense thirst 
saves me from an untimely grave — In the hos- 
pital — On guard 68 

VIII 

Comrade Moore shot on relieving me of picket duty 
— My vow of vengeance — Writing the poem, 
" All Quiet Along the Potomac " — Stricken with 
measles — " The massacre at Ball's Bluff " — Our 
life at winter quarters near Leesburg .... 79 

IX 

Hair-breadth escapes — Am appointed scout to Gen- 
eral Jackson — My appreciation of General Jack- 
son — The Romney Expedition — Jackson's splen- 
did generalship and military genius — My per- 
sonal experiences in Jackson's campaigns . . 90 

X 

Presented with saber by General Ewell — Turner 
Ashby — General Jackson's version of the " Gal- 
lop of Death " — Jackson's retreat up the Valley 
of Virginia — Death of Ashby — In the Shenan- 
doah Valley — In the hospital at Charlottesville 104 

XI 

Back to camp — At Cedar Mountain — Receive my dis- 
charge from the army — Remain in camp at re- 
quest of General Jackson — Exhibit my marks- 
manship to General Lee at his request — I report 
to General J. E. B. Stuart — The " Second Ma- 
nassas " battle 122 



CONTENTS 6 

XII 

At Frederick City — With Jackson at Harper's Ferry 
— ^Receive letter of dismissal from my sweet- 
heart — Battle of Sharpsburg — With Jackson at 
Fredericksburg — Advance of Hooker's Army — 
Bravery of dying Confederate soldiers . . . 140 

XIII 
Ordered to General Joseph E. Johnston's headquar- 
ters — Am sent with supplies and dispatches to 
General John C. Pemberton — My most perilous 
undertaking — " Whistling Dick " — Adventures 
at Vicksburg 156 

XIV 

My return trip to General Johnston — Advise General 
Johnston of conditions at Vicksburg — Am or- 
dered to take a rest and go to my father's home 
at Belvidere 182 

XV 

Am ordered again to Vicksburg — At Yazoo City — 
Return to Jackson — Am wounded and sent to 
hospital at Selma, Ala. — Report to General 
Bragg and join General Longstreet — Receive 
major's commission 198 

XVI 

Battle of Chickamauga — I make frequent raids — My 

first spree — Battle of Missionary Ridge . . . 205 

XVII 

Receive orders from General Forrest — Am captured 
by Colonel G. W. Gaines — The Dutch jailer — 
Offered freedom — Am forwarded to Louisville 
— My escape — Am ordered to report to General 
Stuart in Virginia — My journey to Virginia . 214 



6 CONTENTS 

XVIII 
Arrival at General Stuart's headquarters — Battle of 
the Wilderness — " Jackson's Ghost " — Death of 
General Stuart — At Spottsylvania Court House 
— Captured and sent to Fort Delaware . . . 231 

XIX 

At Fort Delaware — On board the Crescent — In 
Charleston harbor — Under fire of our own guns 
— I agree to be exchanged for Major Harry 
White 237 

XX 

At General Hardee's headquarters — I refuse to be 
exchanged for White — Confederate prison at 
Charleston — I am exchanged for Major Charles 
P. Mattocks — Yankees refuse to accept the ex- 
change and I go back to Morris Island . . . 248 

XXI 

At Roper Hospital at Charleston — Reply to accusa- 
tion of apropriating to my own use supplies sent 
to prisoners by me — Spend Christmas holidays 
at Montgomery — Assigned to duty around Pe- 
tersburg — Rendered cripple for life . . . . 259 

XXII 
Lee's surrender — Refused a parole — Go to Yazoo 
Valley — Make contract to gin cotton for Dr. 
Jiggets — Before the Grand Jury at Yazoo City 263 

XXIII 

I teach school — My marriage — Make Austin my home 
— The birth of our son — Surveying in Yazoo 
Valley — Retrospection 274 

LECTURES ON "AMERICA; THE OLD WORLD," 
AND OTHER SUBJECTS 

Situation of the Garden of Eden — The glories of 
the aurora borealis — North America undoubtedly 
the region of the earliest civilization . . . . 281 



CONTENTS 7 

WHERE DID CAIN GET HIS WIFE? ] 

The sixth era of creation — The first men and women { 

— The superior being of the eighth era — Adam ! 

and Eve — Cain's wife a creature of the sixth era 294 i 

j 

THE MOUND BUILDERS ! 

Civilization first attained along the range of the An- i 
dean Mountains — From here spread to the shores 

of Asia and Africa — Negroes the Mound-Build- ] 

ers under taskmasters — The potter's art — Life | 

of the Mound-Builders 307 

I 

WHAT BECAME OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS? | 

Miscegenation the true cause of their disappearance j 

— Moses and the Israelites — A warning to this ! 

nation — The Negro 325 \ 

THE DARWINIAN THEORY ^ 

The survival of the fittest — Empedocles precursor of i 

Darwin — Darwin theory tenable up to the eighth j 

era of creation — " The Immortality of Love " — j 

Darwin's theory not in conflict with the Mosaic I 

account of man's creation — The blessings of God i 

— Eternity 344 i 



INTRODUCTION 

In offering this book to the public I have been im- 
pelled by no desire to attain notoriety or hope of 
making money out of it, but as garbled accounts of 
many of the incidents I shall herein relate have long 
been public property, and read and reread in many 
lands, I feel it a duty I owe, not only to the reading 
public, but to myself and descendants, that I give the 
cold facts just as they occurred. I shall make no 
attempt to write history, or give details of great 
battles, I shall narrate what I saw with my own 
eyes and what occurred to me individually, and I will be 
as brief with each event as possible, and where they are 
of great importance to me personally I shall be minute 
in my word painting, and truthfully convey the scene 
and incident to the mind of the reader. 

For more than a third of a century I have been 
urged and entreated by my legions of friends to give 
these incidents to the public, but until now I have been 
restrained from the fear that I would be looked upon 
as an egotistical braggart — for my long life, of more 
than three-quarters of a century, has been a busy and 
eventful one, and filled with adventures in every clime 
under the sun. And whether in early childhood as a 
schoolboy, or as an Indian, a captive, on the wild 
Western plains of my own native State, as sailor, 
soldier, explorer, hunter, or civil engineer, I have 
been guided by devotion, concentration, and absolute 
persistence in the duties involved in whatever enterprise 
or calling I at the time engaged in. I always tried 
to excel in whatever I undertook. I was taught in my 
early childhood by one of the best of mothers that 
whatever was worth doing was worth doing well, and 
this idea has always been uppermost in my mind, and 
has been my guide through life. 

An old Latin idiom in early life appealed to me, and 



10 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

I adopted it, " Aut viam, mveniam, aut faciam.^^ 
Broadly translated, " I will find a way, or make one." 
This has carried me through many a wilderness, and 
cheered me and forced paths over seemingly insur- 
mountable difficulties, and brought me to havens of 
safety through many storms. 

In my explorations I followed no guides. I led the 
way and blazed the paths. In hunting the wild ani- 
mals of the jungle I made no haphazard shots at 
them, I shot to kill. In battle I saw my country's 
foes, those whose duty it was to slay me or my com- 
panions, and to slay them was the duty I had to per- 
form. Hence, I loaded my rifle to kill. And, when 
I came in contact with those vast hordes of foreign 
hirelings who entered the Federal Army during the 
great " Confederate War " for gold alone, and not 
from patriotism or love of country, I felt it a solemn, 
a God-given duty, a privilege to kill them ; and I 
thanked my Creator that he had given me steady hands 
and good eyes to hold and direct my missiles of death, 
for they were only fit to feed the buzzards of our 
Southland. They had sold their very souls for gold, 
and I took delight in piling their carcases in mounds 
to feed the fowls of the air. And I would do it again, 
under the same conditions, a thousand times over. 

My early training and life with the Comanche In- 
dians imbued me with a spirit that made me never for- 
get an enemy or desert a friend, hence I always smote 
my enemies and loved and helped my friends, and did 
my duty as my God-given conscience dictated and 
approved. 

And here, to-day, in my little, humble cottage home 
in the village of Lyon, in the beautiful and most fertile 
region of earth near the banks of the Sunflower River, 
in the great plain of the Yazoo Delta of the Mississippi 
Valley, where the whir and hum of the mighty wheels 
of that far-reaching, civilizing, ^nd educating railroad, 
the Illinois Central, daily and hourly reminds me of 
the busy outside world, I sit and dream over the past, 
enjoying the confidence and esteem of friends and 
neighbors, and, above all, blest with the love of a truly 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 11 

womanly woman, whose tender touch and devout min- 
istrations for forty years have smoothed the wrinkles 
from my brow, and have made my pathway, once so 
rugged and bloodstained, smooth and level, and covered 
the dark, crimson-dyed spots on it with pure white 
lilies-of-the-valley, and filled my vase with the per- 
fume of star jasmine and violets. And with my brow 
still caressed by her loving hand, and my lips kissed 
by hers and those of my loved children and grand- 
children, I feel at peace with all the world. 

For the part I took in the war I feel a just pride, 
and have no apologies to make. I leave my acts and 
deeds a legacy to my loved ones and their descendants ; 
and were I to go over the same long four years of 
bloody warfare again, as in the sixties, I would not 
alter a single step, but pursue the same pathways to 
the end. I love my sunny Southland as only a son can 
love a mother. And to those dear old comrades with 
whom I ate, drank, slept, marched, fought, and shared 
the prison fare I tender a comrade's love. I feel that 
if we meet no more on earth we shall soon do so in the 
" Bivouac beyond the Stars," and that we shall rest in 
the beautiful vales of Paradise and enjoy the smiles 
of a just, approving God. 



CHAPTER I 

Birthplace — Personal appearance — Educated in early years 
by a Polish exile — Sent to Onion Creek school — Ran 
away from home — Stolen by Indians. 

I WAS born in Captain John Christman's tent, on 
Laberde Prairie, on the headwaters of the Yegua River, 
near where the small village of Gay Hill was after- 
ward built, in what is now Washington County, Texas, 
on the 10th of October, 1829. My mother has often 
told me that at my birth I weighed only three pounds, 
clothes and all, and that when a week old she slipped 
her wedding ring over my hand up to my shoulder. 
At sixteen years of age I weighed only fifty-eight 
pounds. 

At the beginning of the war in 1861 I was six feet 
and one-quarter of an inch in height, and weighed 
one hundred and sixty pounds, and my face was as 
smooth as a girl's, and as free from whiskers. In 
my babyhood days and early childhood my father de- 
termined that I should be a preacher, a missionary 
to some foreign clime, and he wished me educated with 
this end in view. I was taught my letters from a Latin 
grammar, and began the study of that language as 
soon as I mastered the alphabet, Greek and Hebrew 
followed. 

When but three years of age there came into our 
camp an old man, a Polish exile, a baron of German 
birth, by the name of Homvosky. He was a graduate 
of Heidelberg, and was a general in the Polish Army, 
and had been banished from Europe upon the downfall 
of Poland. 

This old man took a great fancy to me, and for 
years I slept with him. He would wash and dress me, 
and I almost worshiped him. He taught me my Latin, 
Greek, and Hebrew lessons, and, what I liked best, how 

12 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 13 

to box, wrestle, fence, with both foil and saber, and 
how to ride, and shoot the rifle and pistol. Many a 
long ride over the prairies, on his shoulders, have I 
taken, when in search of deer, or turkeys, or wild 
animals of that region. 

When on these tramps he would fill my youthful 
mind with history of great events that had occurred 
in ages past. Under his kind and steady hand, for 
nearly seven years, my young mind expanded rapidly, 
and I was almost as well versed in the languages and 
ancient histories, and almost as far advanced in mathe- 
matics as many of our college graduates of to-day. 

Just before my tenth birthday my old friend passed 
into the " Great Beyond," and left a void in my life — 
my first great sorrow. 

At that time we were in camp where the city of 
Austin now stands. There were not enough children 
in our camp to employ a teacher, but about seven 
miles south of Austin, on the banks of Onion Creek, 
was a larger settlement, known as the Tom McKinney 
branch of Austin's colony. Here, in a wooden-framed, 
cloth-covered schoolhouse, some twenty or more of the 
colonists' children daily studied under the tutelage of 
an old red-headed, Scotch-Irish, Presbyterian school- 
master. 

Soon after the death of my grand old Baron-exiled 
friend and teacher I was sent to the Onion Creek 
school by my father. I had to ford the Colorado 
River, and ride across a wide prairie studded with 
live-oaks and dogwood thickets, and here and there a 
few post-oaks. Many of the live-oaks were draped in 
mustang grape vines, on which hung great clusters 
of these fragrant, luscious, and juicy fruit. The land- 
scape was one to awake all the poetry in the soul of 
a young and ardent lover of nature. 

Each morning and evening, on my Indian pony, I 
rode the seven miles that lay between the school and 
my home. I did not fancy my teacher— our spirits 
were not in accord. He was as far off from my old 
exiled friend in intellect and soul as the earth from the 
sun, and he was a stem and strict disciplinarian. He 



14 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

did not believe in sparing the rod and spoiling the 
child, as he held a switch ever ready in his hand, and 
upon the least provocation, from boy or girl, he let 
it fall upon the offender with force, or gently as a 
reminder. I could feel neither love nor respect for 
him. 

Among the pupils was a young girl just budding 
into womanhood, a Miss Mary Stone, whose father 
had been captured by Mexicans in what is known in 
Texas history as the Mier expedition. These men, 
some two hundred and fifty strong, had made a raid into 
Mexico, and been captured by the soldiers of Santa 
Anna and confined in the castle of San Perote, down in 
Mexico, and every tenth man condemned to die. They 
were not chosen by name or number by their captors, 
but their selection left to the chance of drawing from 
twenty-five black beans and two hundred and twenty- 
five white. Each prisoner was required to step up 
and draw a bean from the hat, where they had all been 
placed. Those drawing black ones were shot. 

Mary's father drew a white one, and thus for the 
present was safe, though still a prisoner, and suffer- 
ing all the tortures that a half-civilized people inflict 
on helpless men when in their power. 

My sympathy and love went out to Mary in her dis- 
tress at the uncertainty of her father's fate. She 
would take me in her lap, and curl my long hair, kiss 
me, and call me her little sweetheart, and I almost 
worshiped her. She was beginning the study of Latin, 
and I would write her exercises, and thus keep her at 
the head of her class. One evening, just at recess, 
someone informed the teacher that I aided Mary and 
kept her at the head of the class. Without any warn- 
ing he carried me down to the spring, which was just 
under the bluff, a short distance from the tent-house 
in which he taught, and near the spring, in the shadow 
of an old cottonwood log, he repeated a verse from 
the Bible, about sparing the rod and spoihng the 
child; he then knelt, and prayed a short prayer, in 
which he asked his Heavenly Father to forgive the 
awful crime of which I had been guilty, and then rose, 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 15 

and catching me by my long hair, almost lifting me 
from the ground, he administered an awful whipping, 
such as I had never felt before. 

The first terrible blow from the lash almost took my 
breath, and the sting of it sent a thrill through every 
fiber of my being. I started to scream, but caught my 
breath and shut my teeth together, and let every muscle 
grow rigid, and made no sound. He might have cut 
me in two and I would not have flinched. 

Such feelings as crept over me are indescribable. 
I determined to have revenge on him for the outrage 
and pain inflicted, and I grew as calm and stolid as if 
made of stone. 

When he had finished I saw the blood trickling down 
my feet from his cruel blows. I started straight up 
the bluflp, my feet and hands clasping the limestone 
steps that we boys had cut in the soft rock to aid us 
in climbing its perpendicular sides. My intentions were 
to reach and saddle my pony, and gallop away toward 
my home before my teacher could reach the school 
grounds, and prevent me, as he would have to go down 
the creek, some hundred yards, before he could get 
up on the bluff", and by the time he reached the tent 
I would be on my pony and flying across the prairie 
out of his reach. 

Just as I got to the top of the bluff* I looked down 
and saw him climbing up close behind me. I did not 
hesitate a moment ; I , gathered a stone, sharp and 
jagged-edged, and with all the strength and pent-up 
anger I felt I sent it at his head, and struck him fair 
in the forehead just as he was lifting his eyes to see 
how near he was to the top. 

As my stone struck, he dropped like a dead man to 
the bottom. I felt a great load, as it were, lifted from 
my soul; I felt that I had fully avenged my wrongs 
without aid from anyone. I took my bucket and books, 
saddled my pony, and without saying a word to anyone 
I mounted, and with a light heart rode home. 

Some two or three hours after my arrival I was 
chagrined and surprised to see the old fellow, all cov- 
ered with soot and blood, ride up to our tent, dismount, 



16 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

and go in. In a few moments I was called by my 
father, and I saw my old teacher, covered with blood 
and his head bound in cobwebs and soot, and his brown 
linen suit, that had been washed and bleached until 
white, showed him up as the bloodiest man I had ever 
seen alive. 

I found that he had given my father his side of the 
controversy, and I made no defense. I aimed to kill 
him as he climbed the bluff behind me, and had failed, 
and I was disappointed. 

My father gave me another terrible whipping in 
the presence of my teacher, and I bore it with the same 
unflinching stoicism, and without a sound. But I made 
up my mind, while the lash burned my tender skin, 
that never again would I attend school under the old 
Scotchman. Yes, I would die first. 

I there determined to run away from home the next 
day, and go to Mexico, to Castle San Perote, where 
Mary's father was a prisoner, and live with the Mexi- 
cans, where neither my father nor teacher would dare 
to come to hunt me. 

That night I molded bullets, with two negro boys, 
until late in the night, and secured a large buffalo 
horn, containing five pounds of powder, for my little 
rifle. The rifle was a present from General M. B. 
Lamar, and my shotpouch a gift from General Sam 
Houston. I put my bullets in one end and my powder- 
horn in the other of a rawhide sack or wallet, as they 
were called in those days, and hid them in a crevice 
of a bluff on the river, just above the ford on the 
bank of the Colorado, where I daily crossed it on my 
way to school. The next morning I took my rifle, 
and a few charges of powder in the horn attached, and 
my bucket of lunch, and satchel of books, and, giving 
my mother an extra hug and kiss, I mounted my pony 
and rode away. As soon as I crossed the divide be- 
tween the river and Onion Creek I set my satchel of 
books and bucket in the trail, and turning southwest 
I put my pony in a lope, and struck the trail that led 
from Austin to San Antonio, entering the latter near 
Manchac Spring, about twelve miles from Austin. I 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 17 

turned down the trail in a gallop, and rode up on the 
bluff that overlooks the San Marcos Springs. The 
trail makes a sudden turn to the east and follows down 
the river on top of the bluff for some distance, before 
descending to the ford. Just as I made the turn I 
saw, standing directly in front of me in the trail, an 
Indian in his war paint, and with his bow at a ready. 
My first impulse was to raise my rifle and kill him 
before he could shoot me, but my gun was in its sling 
and swung to the pommel of my saddle, so I merely 
checked the speed of my pony and rode straight up 
to him. 

As I approached the thought entered my brain, 
" Why not go with the Indians, instead of the Mexi- 
cans.?" and I made up my mind at once to go with 
them. I rode up and stopped, and he said in very good 
English : 

"Where going.''" 

Without hesitation or the least embarrassment I an- 
swered, " With the Indians." 

" That's good, give me gun." 

I handed him my rifle, and as I did so I glanced 
back up the trail, and at the very spot from which 
I would have tried to shoot my captor about thirty 
other warriors had risen out of tall mesquite grass. 
They came in a body down the road, and each took 
a good look at me, several saying in very good Eng- 
lish: 

"How do.?" 

They exchanged my pony for a fresher one, as my 
long gallop of some seventeen or eighteen miles had 
begun to tell on him, and mounted me on one of theirs, 
and we started off in a northwesterly direction. 



CHAPTER II 

Parentage — Escapade with wild cats — Exploding " ghost " 
and " witch " theories — Visits to grandparents — part- 
nership of my father with William Jacob Thompson — 
Protecting the government archives — Life with the In- 
dians. 

Before going into the details of my long captivity 
of four years and three months among them, the reader 
must indulge me for a while, as I give a short history 
of myself and parents prior to my life among this 
fierce band of Comanches. 

Both of my parents were natives of Virginia. Father 
was born in Henry County, at the old family residence 
of Patrick Henry, who was his great-grandfather on 
his father's side. John Fontaine, his grandfather, mar- 
ried Martha, the oldest daughter of Patrick Henry, 
and they named their first-born after Patrick Henry, 
and Patrick Henry Fontaine married Nancy Dabney 
Miller, and my father. Rev. Edward Fontaine, was the 
oldest child, and first great-grandson of the immortal 
Patrick Henry. 

My father was born on Leatherwood Creek, in 
Henry County, on the 5th of August, 1800. 

My mother was bom at the old homestead of the 
Maurys, in Albemarle County, Virginia, on September 
13, 1805. Her father moved to Tennessee when she 
was an infant, and Maury County was named after 
him. 

On the 10th of September, 1828, they were married 
at the old homestead near Columbia, in Maury County, 
and went at once to Texas with Stephen F. Austin, 
who had received valuable grants of land, and other 
inducements, from the Mexican authorities to induce 
emigration and the colonization of the territory. 

My grandfather took up his residence at Pontotoc, 
in Pontotoc County, Mississippi, in 1834, and for sev- 
eral years, under President Jackson's Administration, 

18 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 19 

was surveyor general of public lands south of Ten- 
nessee, and had his land office at Pontotoc. 

When a child only six years old I was carried to see 
my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and kinfolks in and 
around Pontotoc. 

I well remember the looks of the great logs the 
negroes were hewing in long straight lines to build 
the houses to live in. They were a novelty to me, as 
my home had ever been a tent, and I asked my grand- 
father how he was going to take all those great logs 
with him when he went to move his tent.'' This, of 
course, provoked a laugh at my expense, and exposed 
my ignorance to the crowd, and my mother had to 
tell them that I had never lived in a house, but always 
in a tent that could be moved about to suit our nomadic 
life on the prairies of our Texas home: 

I had several boyish escapades that were somewhat 
ludicrous, while we stayed at grandfather's. One I 
well remember. 

Grandpa was very fond of cats, and he had a dozen 
or more that at each meal he would feed out on the 
brick walk at the front porch; and there were a num- 
ber that lived out on the lot around the stables and 
barns, and these were wild and would not come about 
the house. Grandma constantly complained that cats 
destroyed the young chickens, and ought to be de- 
stroyed; so, at her suggestion, grandpa offered us a 
picayune for each pair of cat ears we would bring 
him. Under the guidance of Billy Bradford, my un- 
cles, Edmund Winston and Charles Fontaine, we or- 
ganized a brigade of " cat hunters," and proceeded to 
destroy all the cats we could find around and about 
the barns and stables. But the cats seemed to have had 
warning of our intentions, and only two or three yielded 
us their ears, after a long and exciting chase. But 
nearer the house we found several tame ones ; these 
we did not kill, but merely cut off their ears. 

That night I offered the spoils of the chase to my 
grandfather, and received fifty cents in picayunes for 
my reward. But the next morning, when the old! 
man went to feed his pets, seven hoisted their tails and 



20 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

came rushing up to him, bloody around their heads 
and minus their ears. 

He said nothing on the porch as he gazed at his 
shorn pets, but he walked out to a young, long-limbed 
elm and cut a nice keen switch, went into his office, and 
called me in. I had to obey. As I entered he aslced 
if I still had the money he paid me for catching the 
wild cats out at the barn.'' 
" Yes, sir," I said. 

" Well, give it back to me, I paid you too much." 

He held out his hand and I dropped the picayunes 

one by one into it. He took out seven, and then 

handed me back the rest, and I started to go, but he 

said: 

" I am not through my settlement with you yet ; 
don't I owe you something else.'' " 

I knew by intuition what was coming — my con- 
science told me this, and I answered : 
" No, sir," 

" But I do," he said, " and I am going to pay you 
now." 

And he did, and it made an impression on me that 
has never been effaced. 

Upon another occasion, to get revenge for this whip- 
ping, I played a practical joke on him that was cruel 
in the extreme. 

Every afternoon, after dinner, he would take a nap 
for a few minutes, and then get up and go in his 
garden and weed or work among his vegetables for 
exercise and recreation. On the day I remember so 
well it was washday, and the women had been washing. 
They had stretched a clothes line from the posts around 
the well to another in front of the back window of the 
office in which grandpa took his nap. I heard him 
snoring, and knew that he was sound asleep. I caught 
two of the largest old tomcats that were asleep on the 
gallery, and handling them gently I tied their tails 
together, and slipped up to the clothes line and threw 
them across it, and then hid behind the well curb and 
shed to watch the outcome. The cats at once made 
their presence known, and soon I heard grandpa say 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 21 

" Scat ! " in no uncertain tones ; but his voice only in- 
creased the din of the warring cats, and brought 
grandpa to the window to see the meaning of the 
turmoil. I was peeping from my hiding-place enjoy- 
ing the fun, and he got a glimpse of me, and out in 
his slippers he came, cut the strings that bound the 
cats, and came straight to my hiding-place. He 
stripped a limb from a young peach tree, and for a 
minute or two I had some sure enough " fun " in the 
most exaggerated form. 

On one occasion my curiosity was aroused by hearing 
the negroes talking about ghosts. I wanted to see 
one, and old Anthony, one of the oldest of the negroes, 
told me that I would have to go to a graveyard, among 
the dead people, and sit right still until midnight, and 
a ghost would come right up to me, and I could see 
him in the dark, as he would be white. So one night 
I slipped out of my trundlebed and went across the 
orchard, and into the graveyard, and got up on a 
tombstone and waited. How long I sat I have no idea, 
but presently I was aroused by the shaking of a bush 
that hung over the gravestone and touched me, and 
saw something white, seemingly, bowing to me and 
almost in reach. It came a little nearer, and I made 
a spring and grabbed it. It gave a quick whirl, and 
lunged forward with a loud " Baa-baa," and revealed 
by its bleat an old billygoat that I was familiar with 
around the lot. My disappointment was intense, and 
from that day to this I have had my doubts about there 
being any real ghosts. 

I had another " witch theory " exploded in a some- 
what similar way not long after my ghost adventure. 
Only a few miles from grandpa''s there lived two very 
old people, kind, gentle, and as hospitable as could 
be found. They lived alone in a large, rambling house, 
with upstairs rooms. The children of this old couple 
were married and scattered around, and frequently with 
their children would spend days and weeks at the old 
homestead. I paid them a visit one evening, and a 
storm came up, and darkness, and they kept me until 
morning. When bedtime came they sent a servant 



22 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

with me upstairs, and put me to bed in a large room 
with an old high-post tester-covered bedstead, hung 
all round with heavy curtains above and below the 
place I lay on. The negro helped me to undress, and 
put on my nightrobe, which was much too large for me, 
lifted me up into the tall bed, drew the curtains to- 
gether, and left me alone, I heard her footsteps echo- 
ing down the stairs, then all was silent as death. I 
lay for a long time thinking of all the stories I had 
heard the negroes tell about ghosts, and about this old 
woman, in whose house I now was, being a cruel witch 
that liked to ride horses at night, and take bad boys 
away from their homes, and not let them see their 
mother or father any more. I was satisfied on the 
ghost question, but the witch was a known quantity, 
for I had read of the Witch of Endor in the Bible, and 
I had no doubts on that line, and here I was, all alone, 
in a real witch's house, and miles from home. 

I had been told by Nancy Ann and old Anthony, and 
other negroes at grandpa's, that as long as I worked 
my big toe on my right foot that the witches would 
not and could not bother me. I thought of these 
things in a wide-awake state for some time, when all 
of a sudden I was roused by the sound of footsteps 
coming up to my room. They were not those of a hu- 
man being, for these feet had claws — I could hear them 
strike the steps as they ascended the stairs. I was 
satisfied that the witch had transformed herself into 
some great animal and was coming to take me away. 
I worked my big toe with wonderful rapidity, but it 
did not seem to have the desired effect. The witch 
came on right to my chamber door, and I heard it 
screech, as she pushed it open, and I heard her claws 
strike the floor as she approached the bed, and felt 
the curtains part, and heard her heavy breathing as 
she seemed to stand and look down upon me. It was 
very dark, and I could see nothing. All of a sudden, 
as I was doing my best working my toe, a tremendous 
body lit upon me, nearly mashing me down through the 
bed, and I could feel the quick throb of the witch's 
heart beat. Mine almost ceased. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 23 

I lay like a dead being for some time, with the pant- 
ing witch lying heavily upon me, and making no effort 
to do me an injury. I took my head from under the 
cover and stretched my hand out to feel her. The 
relief I experienced was beyond expression, for, instead 
of being grabbed by the long bony claws of a horrid 
witch, I was greeted by the warm breath of old Ossian, 
our big Newfoundland dog. I grabbed him and drew 
him under the cover, and in a few minutes I was safe 
in the land of Nod. 

My dog had missed me and followed my pony's track, 
and was at the house before the storm, and when night 
came on he made so much noise that the servant let 
him in. He came right up to me, and thus for all time 
ended my belief in witches. 

We spent several months with my grandparents, and 
I think that they were glad to bid me good-by. Upon 
returning to my prairie home and my old Polish exile, I 
practiced daily with my rifle at the deer, turkeys, and 
prairie chickens that were in herds and flocks on every 
hand, and became wonderfully expert with it. Under 
my old tutor I made progress with my lessons in mathe- 
matics and all the higher branches that he taught by 
the text and by lectures. 

In 1837 we paid my grandparents another visit, and 
my father and the Hon. Jacob Thompson, who was af- 
terward Secretary of the Interior under President 
Buchanan, with William Bradford, formed a law part- 
nership at Pontotoc. My father and Jacob Thompson 
entered some large tracts of land in the Mississippi 
bottom, on what is now known as Bear Lake, in Tunica 
County, and in the winter of 1837 and 1838 they took 
a surveyor and a large force of negroes, wagons, and 
mules, and four Chickasaw Indians — the latter as hun- 
ters to keep them in fresh meat. 

We camped on some mounds just south and west of 
the present station of Dundee, on the Yazoo and Mis- 
sissippi Valley Railroad, on the east bank of Bear 
Lake. Here, with " Fat Bob " as my Indian compan- 
ion and guide, I hunted as far south as Ward Lake. 

Father and " Jake " Thompson followed the sur- 



24 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

veyors' trails and superintended the deadening of the 
lands. 

Returning to Texas in 1838, we moved up the Colo- 
rado River to the present site of the city of Austin, 
and laid it out. Our tent was pitched in the center of 
what is now Pecan Avenue, and in laying off the city 
a small triangle was left to mark the spot, as ours 
was the first tent pitched, and ours the first horses 
ever staked by a white man's hand in that region. 

Being the first male child born in the colony, I was 
allowed to hold and help drive the first tent pin, and 
to I aid in staking the first horse on the site of what was 
to be the capital city of the largest and greatest State 
in the grandest republic the world has even known. 

It was on this occasion that I first felt that I had 
a place in the world. 

In 1839 we built a substantial, double-walled, four- 
room, auditor's, comptroller's, and treasurer's log- 
house, and a heavy double-walled house, lined with 
earth, eight inches thick, of hand-sawed boards, for 
a general land office, and a large, roomy capitol build- 
ing of hand-sawed boards. We then stored all the 
archives of the State away nicely for the officers in 
charge whenever their services should be required. 

President Sam Houston, concluding that Austin 
was too far out on the confines of civilization for their 
safety, decided that he would remove them back to 
Washington, where they would not be so exposed. So 
he sent some commissioners, headed by old " Deaf 
Smith," to remove them. But they met a snag and did 
not carry out Sam Houston's directions. 

All the men were absent from the city upon their 
arrival, on an Indian scout, and only seven grown 
women, and five boys, myself the oldest boy, and one 
girl composed the whole white population of the city 
when the commissioners appeared. Mrs. Crosby, Mrs. 
Haynie, and Mrs. Swisher had the keys to the build- 
ings, and they told the commissioners that they could 
not get the archives, nor could they enter the build- 
ings, until the men returned. The commissioners be- 
came indignant at the delay, and said that they would 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 25 

break the doors down and remove them anyhow, as 
they were clothed with the power and had the authority 
to do so from the President. 

My mother replied that when they broke open those 
doors and removed those records it would be over the 
dead bodies of every woman and child in that place. 

The ladies loaded a small six-pound cannon and 
sighted it at the entrance to the land office, and gave 
me and three other boys rifles, and lit a piece of hemp 
rope, and primed the cannon, ready to defend the 
archives of the State from being removed, and, as 
" Deaf Smith " stepped upon the front porch into the 
vestibule of the land office, they touched the match to 
the cannon and the ball entered the building just in 
front of " Deaf Smith," covering him with dust and 
splinters. We boys lay behind a small breastwork ready 
to fire with deadly aim at the word, but it never came. 
The commissioners beat a hasty retreat, and the ar- 
chives were saved. 

The hole made in the wall of the old land office by 
the six-pound shot on that fateful morning was af- 
terward closed up, and a metal tablet marked the place, 
with the history of the occurrence engraved thereon 
to perpetuate the event to the coming generations. 

The men upon their return thanked the gallant 
women for their brave acts, and said that it was bet- 
ter than they could have done, as they would have had 
to obey the President and give the archives up. 

It is a pleasure to me now, at this distant day, to 
recall those stirring times in the early days of my 
native State, the founders of which had in their veins 
the best and purest blood of this great nation. It 
was among these noble men and women that my early 
childhood was spent, and the memory of them clings 
to me, and cannot be obliterated. 

Turning again to that fateful morn, the 10th of 
September, 1839, when I handed my gun to my In- 
dian captor, and upon a fresh pony was carried into 
a little over four years of Indian life, I will try to 
give you a brief history. 



26 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

My captors placed my saddle on a fresh pony, took 
my gun and ammunition, and we started on what was 
to me a long and tiresome ride. About four o'clock in 
the evening two of the " bucks " dismounted at the 
top of a high ridge, while the rest of us rode on down 
into a beautiful valley, a mile or more from the ridge. 
Here we dismounted, let our stake ropes drag, and 
hoppled some of the ponies with rawhide thongs, coup- 
ling their front feet close together. After watering 
them, we turned them out tlius fastened to graze. 
About sundown the two Indians left on the ridge came 
up, and we again mounted and continued our march, 
which lasted through the night. I went to sleep on my 
pony and when I awoke I found myself in the arms of 
an Indian — and thus I rode until sun-up. 

We then dismounted, ate a strip of dried venison 
or buffalo meat, and watered and grazed our horses 
for an hour or two, then rode until four in the evening. 
Some time in the night we remounted, and rode until 
daylight, myself in the arms of an Indian. We con- 
tinued thus for many days — I don't know how long. 
I lost my hat the first night, and I thought that maybe 
someone would find it and thus get a clue to the way 
I had gone. 

One evening we came in sight of a very large camp 
where there seemed to be from thirty to forty thousand 
men, women, and children (we numbered only about a 
hundred), and when we rode into their midst they made 
quite a din. I was given in charge of an Indian 
woman, about forty-five years of age, who put her 
arms around me, gave me a hearty squeeze, and made 
signs that I belonged to her. I went into her teepee, 
and was soon fast asleep. How long I slept I have no 
idea. When I awoke the sun was nearly an hour high, 
and the morning bright and clear. 

My foster mother gave me a breakfast of fresh veni- 
son, roasted on the coals, some jerked buffalo meat, 
and dried turkey, and a gourd of water before I left 
the tent. 

As I walked out into the campus all the little In- 
dians around came up and took a good look at me. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 27 

One little tot about my size walked up and gave me a 
sharp rap square in the face. I stood still and looked 
him in the eye. He came up again laughing, and as 
he attempted to repeat the blow I warded it off, let 
drive at him, and laid him out on the ground, flat 
on his back, with the breath almost knocked out of him. 

Another, a shade larger, came up and struck at 
me. I parried the blow and sent him to earth also. 
Then several rushed at me and I got some heavy licks 
about the head and ears, but every blow I struck 
would send my victim to the ground. They were com- 
ing at me in crowds, and I was fast getting winded 
when my foster mother, hearing the melee, came rush- 
ing to my aid and carried me into her tent. After 
resting for an hour or two, I again left my quarters 
and the battle was renewed. 

This routine I had to go through two or three 
times a day for more than a week, until I think that 
every little Indian in the camp that was near my 
size had had a taste of my fist. As I always came out 
victorious when in single combat, they ceased to tor- 
ment me, and I was looked up to as a " good warrior," 
as I was a victor in full three hundred encounters. 



CHAPTER III 

Prestige as a marksman — The Flat-Headed Indians — My 
encounter with a grizzly — Finding evidences of the 
" ClifF-Dwellers " — Walk home a distance of 750 miles 
after living three years with the Comanches. 

After living with my captors for about three 
months and sharing all of their sports and games, swim- 
ming, running, wrestling, and ball playing, I was 
given back my rifle and a small amount of ammunition, 
and told to go and kill a deer for my mother. My 
own pony was returned, and two nearly grown war- 
riors were sent with me to the hunting grounds. 

After riding several miles down a lovely valley, we 
came up on a wide, level plain, with here and there a 
few mcsquite trees, and occasionally a thicket of dog- 
wood or " shin-oak." Just before we reached the end 
of one of these dwarf shin-oak thickets, a very large 
buck leaped out in front of me only a few yards away 
and dashed off at his best speed. I raised my rifle, let 
drive at him and broke his neck. I saw a look of sur- 
prise on my companions' faces, but they said nothing. 
They were only armed with bows and arrows. They 
dismounted and hung my deer high up in a mesquite 
tree above the reach of a wolf, and we continued our 
hunt. As we approached another thicket we separated, 
they a little in advance and on the right side of me. 
I had only ridden a few yards when another deer 
sprang Into the open In front of me and I repeated 
my first shot. They hung him up just as they did the 
first. Not half a mile was passed when several deer 
dashed out of a thicket and I broke the neck of an- 
other. Neither of my companions had had even a 
shot, for I did not wait for the deer to stop so that 
they could stalk and creep up on them, but killed them 
while at full speed, a proceeding they had never be- 
fore witnessed, and they could not comprehend the 
power that I held. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 29 

Putting a deer up behind each of us, we turned back 
to camp. They laid the three deer down before my 
foster mother's door and rode off. Soon, from the 
gestures and the language of many around the camp, 
I noticed that there was something wrong. I saw my 
comrades show that I had killed all three of the deer 
while sitting on my horse, that I had broken each of 
their necks while they were at full speed, and it was 
plain to see that they did not believe this. All eyes 
were turned on me, and by gestures they asked me if I 
did kill them while running, and without getting off 
my horse. I answered in the affirmative. Fully a dozen 
or more gray-haired warriors came up and made a 
close inspection of the deer, turning them about in 
different directions, then, leaving, they returned with 
the chief. He also turned the deer about, made 
a careful and critical examination of them, gave a 
grunt of incredulity, and left. He had made the two 
young men who were with me go through the same 
pantomime that the others had, showing how I sat 
my horse, how the deer ran, and how I threw my gun 
up and shot; how the deer were hit and how they fell. 

After some consultation and the elapse of an hour 
or so, they brought my pony out, and several hundred 
men assembled, including my two comrades of the 
morning without their arms, and the chief, and mount- 
ing their horses the whole cavalcade moved up the 
valley in an opposite direction from our course of the 
morning. 

I was placed in front and my two comrades just 
behind me. After riding a mile or so we came to a 
clump of Cottonwood trees on the bank of the stream 
upon which we were camped. On the opposite side of 
the river was a high bluff. The party halted, and my 
two comrades rode some two or three hundred yards 
in front of the crowd. Some prairie chickens flew up 
and I started to throw up my rifle and shoot, but they 
caught my gun and stopped me. After a silent ride 
of a mile or more farther a fine drove of wild turkeys 
flew up from under the lower bank of the river and one 
sailed across in front of me. I raised my rifle and fired, 



30 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

cutting him down. My two companions yelled, whirled 
round, and rode back in a gallop through the crowd 
that was following, and never halted until they reached 
the camp. The whole cavalcade rode up to me, and the 
chief took me and my gun in his arms from off my 
pony, and said many times " How do ! How do ! " 
and I think I shook hands with every member of the 
party. 

My turkey was borne in triumph on the point of 
a lance into camp, and laid at the door of my foster 
mother's tent. My prestige as a marksman and 
hunter was never again doubted from that day until 
I left them four years after. I had their full esteem 
and confidence, and was always awarded the leadership 
in all juvenile expeditions, and was made chief of the 
young ball players and their games. From my deci- 
sions there was no appeal. 

My life among these Indians was very pleasant for 
four years. In the spring, as soon as the calves of the 
buffaloes were old and strong enough, these animals 
would begin to move northward. This was the signal 
for the Indians to break up their winter camps and 
follow them, as the buffaloes furnished them their meat 
and their houses. We would follow them to the shores 
of Manitoba. I have killed them on the Yellowstone, 
far up on the Platte, the Sioux, and in the valley of 
the Red River of the North, when not a human being 
of my own race inhabited those wild regions, sixty odd 
years ago. 

The buffaloes do not feed like any other animals of 
the plains — they stretch out in long lines, one behind 
the other, and make beaten trails, which they follow 
until paths are worn so deep into the soil that they 
touch their sides, and the young can scarce reach the 
grass that grows along the edges. At the head of the 
moving column are the young and powerful bulls and 
the young heifers, next come the cows and their calves, 
and last the aged patriarchs of the herd. The latter 
act as guards for the young and helpless. All feed 
as they march along the narrow roads. 

They reach their long tongues as far out as pos- 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 31 

sible and grasp a huge mouthful of grass, then slowly 
chew it for some time before they take another bite. 
Thus there is always left a bunch for those following 
behind. 

On one occasion, as I was out in the foothills of the 
Rocky Mountains with a small party of young boys 
and girls on a frolic, we got far out of the regular line 
of march and were lost. We fell into the hands of a 
tribe of Flat Head, or Digger Indians, and they took 
all the care of us they could. We could not speak 
their language, but all tribes have a universal sign 
language that is understood. These Indians are the 
poorest and the lowest in the scale of humanity of 
all the North American tribes that inhabit the plains. 
They live on roots, acorns, grasshoppers, lizards, and 
various kinds of small birds that are easy to trap. 
They catch large quantities of grasshoppers, and a 
small white rock lizard. These they store away in 
straw bunks or pumps, after drying them in the sun. 
They are very fond of a small, sweet, black acorn of 
the live-oak, and the pecan is as great a delicacy as 
candy to a city-bred child. 

Their mode of cooking was crude in the extreme. 
They hollow out a basin with their knives in the soft 
limestone rocks, and fill the hole with water, in which 
they place their dried grasshoppers, lizards, and pow- 
dered acorns. Then they build a fire near by and in it 
place rocks. When these are heated to a very hot 
temperature, they remove them and dip them into the 
water that contains the mass of lizards and other in- 
gredients. As soon as the hot rock quits sizzling, they 
remove it and put in another. This is repeated until 
the stuff is boiled to their taste. We ate this grass- 
hopper and lizard soup for at least a week, when we 
were rescued by our own tribe. This lizard dish is 
quite palatable and tastes like a " crab gumbo " pre- 
pared by a French cook. It would be enjoyed by 
many, as far as taste is concerned, if its composition 
was unknown. 

During my four years of captivity I learned much 
of the habits, the modes, manners, and customs of the 



32 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

wild, nomadic tribes of these yellow savages that prof- 
ited me in after wanderings in other lands and other 
climes. I never led as free, untrammeled a life as I here 
enjoyed among these Indians. My thin summer cloth- 
ing that I wore when captured was soon in rags, and 
I discarded the remnants, and in a state of nudity I 
roamed the rest of the days and years of my captivity. 
Every part of my body became as impervious to heat 
and cold as was my face. I felt far more comfortable 
and free. My skin was like a tanned buckhide, my hair 
long, and my eyesight as keen as that of an eagle. I 
was never sick a day, and my muscles were like steel. 

I often rode alone far away from our camps or 
trails, exploring and examining the country, and my 
old foster mother always had a large store of provi- 
sions, due to my skill with the rifle. I met with one 
adventure that is worth relating, as I thought at the 
time it was the last that I would ever be the hero of. 

I was about five miles from our trail, had dismounted, 
and was stalking a large buck antelope that stood 
on guard on an eminence, under which a large herd 
was feeding. It was not more than a mile from the 
high bluffs that overshadowed the plains. My ante- 
lope was not paying much attention to my signals, 
but seemed to have his attention fixed in an oppo- 
site direction. I saw this, took advantage of it, and 
was soon in shooting distance. I fired and he fell. I 
reloaded my rifle and was priming it as I approached 
to cut his throat and prepare the body for transporta- 
tion to my camp. As I reached the top of the elevation 
and was within a few feet of him, the whole herd, of 
which he was the guardian, came by with a rush, and 
right behind them one of the largest grizzly bears that 
I had ever seen, dead or alive. My dead deer lay be- 
tween us, my horse was half a mile away, and there 
was not a spot of safety or place of retreat in the 
whole range of my vision. I was about ten feet from 
my antelope and I thought that maybe the bear would 
be satisfied with it, and let me alone. This hope was 
soon dispelled, for he came up to it, smelt it, turned it 
over, licked the blood, and looked at me. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 33 

I stood perfectly still and made up my mind that 
the only spot my little ball could have any effect on 
his huge carcass was in his eye, and the only hope I 
had was to find his brain in that opening. All of a 
sudden he quit licking the blood, looked toward the 
bluffs, gave a low growl, and turning toward me raised 
on his hind feet until it seemed that he was as tall 
as the bluffs. I saw that his intentions were to destroy 
me, and I had to act quickly or it would be too late. 

As he rose and faced me, I raised my rifle and fired 
directly at his throat, as I knew that a blow near or 
upon " Adam's apple " always knocked a man down 
or stunned him. My little ball went true and the 
giant fell at my very feet. I loaded as quickly as I 
could, and put another bullet in the hollow of his 
ear, but this was needless, as the first shot had killed him. 

I reloaded, and in a moment after I was very weak 
and could hardly stand. The sudden revulsion of feel- 
ing from a nightmare of death to the enchanted ground 
of perfect safety was too great, and I had to sit down 
and recover. 

My pony was frightened by the stampede of the 
herd of antelope and the scent of the grizzly, and 
galloped across the prairie toward our camp, leaving 
me alone with my dead. I knew, however, that when 
my pony reached the camp that my friends would begin 
a search for me, and I did not feel the least alarm. I 
took out my flint and steel from my shot pouch, and 
gathered some " buffalo chips " and dry grass, and 
kindled a fire, then took a steak from my buck and soon 
had a savory meal. I built a large blaze so that my 
friends could see where I was, and to protect me from 
the wolves, that I knew would put in their appearance 
as soon as night came on. 

I was sound asleep when a band of searchers awoke 
me, and their exclamations of admiration at the prowess 
I had shown in killing the great grizzly with one 
small bullet sent a thrill of pleasure to my young heart. 
Several horses were hitched to the bear, I mounted my 
pony, which they had brought with them, and we rode 
into camp. 



34 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

The next morning they examined the bear, the track 
of the bullet, cut him up, and gave the flesh to my 
foster mother. They cut the claws from the hide, 
cleaned and polished them beautifully, and mounted 
them on a band. The war chief put the band around 
my hair, and told me that I belonged to him and was 
one of his warriors. 

Of course I felt proud of the distinction, as I was 
the smallest and youngest of the tribe who had ever 
been thus honored. 

While with the Indians I was a constant student 
of nature, and learned much of the habits and nature 
of wild animals. I could follow their trails sAviftly 
over any kind of ground as unerringly as a trained 
hound could by scent. I wandered among the ruined 
cities of the ancient " cliff-dwellers," and climbed the 
steep sides of the great " mesas " of the Zuni plateaux, 
and played hide-and-seek in the chambers of these, 
the first civilized people in the world — the very first 
that carved stones and lived in stone houses, and un- 
derstood the art of making glazed porcelain ware. 

I have often carried beautiful, small, glazed, and col- 
ored cups, vases, and bowls of different patterns from 
these great elevated rock-hewed houses of a hundred 
rooms to my Indian mother, to use in our camp in 
her domestic pursuits, and I taught her the use of 
many of them. She would never carry them from one 
camp to another, but would either break them or leave 
them where they were last used. I suppose she was 
superstitious regarding them, as she would not give 
me any reason why. 

I remember that in one of the rooms, in a residence 
that was over a thousand feet above the level of the 
surrounding plain, I found a number of skeletons of 
a small, straight-boned people with high foreheads, 
who were nothing like the Indian skeletons. They had 
been murdered by a people using the chipped, rough 
stone arrows and spears, and some of the stones were 
still imbedded in their skulls. 

These skeletons were covered with dust from two 
to three feet deep, beneath which their outlines were 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 35 

plainly visible. When uncovered their bones were too 
soft to handle — they, too, were but dust and crumbled 
at my touch. Xheir implements were all of polished 
stone and colored pottery. I have seen my little In- 
dian playmates throw hundreds of the large and small 
vessels of this pottery ware over the bluffs, from the 
doors of these chambers, and watch them fall and fly 
into a thousand fragments below. How often in later 
years have I regretted this wanton destruction, which 
at the time was great fun to us ! 

But to recount my various adventures while with 
these Indians would only tire you. To the northwest 
of the largest of one of these prehistoric cities of the 
first civilized people of earth there is a lovely canyon, 
and in a day and a half's ride you will pass under three 
long, high " natural bridges." The one nearest the 
mouth of the canyon is about 150 feet high, over 400 
feet long, and 100 feet wide; the second is fully 250 
feet high, 150 feet wide, and is fully 500 feet long; 
the third is a magnificent structure over 500 feet above 
the bottom of the dry bed of the canyon, 300 feet wide 
and 700 feet in length. 

I have passed under these great works of nature in 
our hunting expeditions into the mountains after bear. 
I call attention to these great " natural bridges " here 
to cause some adventurer to visit and photograph these 
wonders of nature. 

I have, in these same regions, passed over beautiful 
tesselated pavements of white and black stone for sev- 
eral miles in extent, and through forests of petrified 
trees that are of the most beautiful colors. It is worth 
a journey across those trackless wastes to see them. 
In the rooms of the cliff-dwellers you can see upon the 
plastering, to this day, the prints of their hands, the 
lines of the epidermis yet clear and distinct, and by 
the art pursued by Bertillon you could get a very 
good idea of the people who once inhabited this region. 
The phrenologist and the anatomist, in the modern 
light of science, could give us pictures of these van- 
ished and long-ago forgotten civilized people. 

Toward the close of my third year of captivity with 



36 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

the Comanches I asked the chief if he would not let 
me go back to my home and see my mother and my 
people. He said yes, if I would walk. 

This reply put a damper on my undertaking the 
journey, as it was at least seven hundred and fifty or 
more miles in an air line, across a trackless waste, to 
my home, and on the route there was a desert of eighty 
miles, without a drop of water in its whole extent. 
There was not a white man nor white settlement on 
those wild wastes between the city of Austin and the 
Pacific Ocean at that time. . So, with a desert in front 
of me of eighty miles in extent and no pony to ride, 
I hesitated and did not accept his offer. But upon 
our return the next year I renewed my request, and 
received the same answer. I then determined to make 
the attempt on foot, and so informed my foster mother. 

The next day I made preparations for my long and 
lonely journey. My foster mother did all she could 
to deter me from the undertaking, but I was firmly 
resolved on making the trip. She made me several 
pairs of heavy-soled moccasins that reached far above 
my knees, to prevent the long coarse grass from cut- 
ting my skin, as I waded through it across the buffalo 
trails. She also prepared some shredded, dried turkey 
breast and venison in a buckskin pouch, filled my quiver 
with a supply of fresh arrows, and a new deer sinew 
string to my bow, and, after putting her mark care- 
fully upon each arrow, she told me to " be good." I 
bade her farewell, and, alone and on foot, I set out on 
my long journey homeward. 

Reader, can you imagine a child scarce fourteen 
years of age (who at sixteen only weighed fifty-eight 
pounds), on a bald prairie, seven hundred and fifty 
miles from home, without a companion, without a 
horse, without a guide, surrounded by wild animals, and 
some parts of his way not within eighty miles of a 
drop of water.? This was my condition. Only the 
hope of seeing my mother at the end of my long tramp 
gave me strength. 

I knew that all the water courses that had their 
sources on the southern and eastern slope of the Rocky 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 37 

Mountains flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, and that 
by following any of them I would strike the Gulf some- 
where. When I came to the desert, or waterless region, 
game became scarce. I carried a deer hide across 
it, and in the morning I would spread it out, shake the 
dew from the grass on to it, and gather the ends up, 
and thus get a supply sufficient to last me all that 
day. Thus I succeeded in keeping water. My rifle 
kept me in a good supply of food — the jerked or 
dried venison and the shredded turkey breasts I used 
as bread. _ 

At night I would kindle a fire of the dry buffalo 
chips, broil my fresh meat, eat a hearty meal of it, and 
then lie down by my fire and sleep as sound as a 
tired child only can. Sometimes the coyotes and larger 
wolves would make some trouble with their howling 
and snarling. If they got too bold I would send a 
ball or an arrow into the nearest and most bold, and 
he would leap off with a howl and the rest would 
scatter. 

I did not see a human being on my whole journey, 
and I don't think that I was ever in any great danger 
from any wild animal. I felt that a special guardian 
angel watched over my pathway, and guided my every 
step. The first water course I struck, after crossing 
the Rio Grande and Pecos, was the Conchas, a tribu- 
tary of the Colorado, the very stream on which the 
city of Austin was located, and on which was my home. 
But I did not know it, and did not recognize it until I 
reached the junction of the San Saba and the Colorado. 
There I saw the remains of one of our camping places 
of more than four years before. My heart gave a 
ereat bound when I saw the first marks of a civilized 
people, and knew that I was not more than seventy-five 
miles from home. 

The day was bright and clear and the moon was 
but a day old, and, had I had moonlight I think that 
I would have been tempted to travel all night, I was 
so elated. 

One evening just after sundown I had built my 
campfire on the eastern slope of a mountain, on the 



38 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

south side of the river, and was looking off down it, 
when I caught the glimmer of a light. It shone out 
bright and clear, and twinkled like a star. I watched 
it until my eyes grew weary and heavy with sleep, and 
I drifted into the Land of Nod with its sheen upon 
my lids. This mountain was only twenty miles from 
my home, and the light was in my mother's room. 



CHAPTER IV 

Arrival home — Mistaken for an Indian — Tortured by wear- 
ing clothing and sleeping in beds — Jeers of neighbor- 
hood children — Sent to Professor Bingham's school. 

The next night I was within ten or twelve miles of 
Austin and on another mountainside. I again built 
my fire, and as it grew* dark I watched for my light 
again. When it appeared, Columbus, seeing the first 
gleam of light from out the pathless sea that shone 
from this, to him, new world, was not and could not 
have been more rejoiced than I. 

For an hour I sat and watched it twinkle, and then 
I made my own larger and brighter, and then I slept 
as sound as a babe. The next day I wandered on, 
over high mountains and deep ravines, until nearly dark, 
when I came out on top of a bluif overlooking Bartons 
Creek. The sun was down as I reached this bluff, but 
from it I could see a house not more than three miles 
away, and it was from this house the light shone. I 
descended the bluff, crossed the creek, and came out 
on the prairie beyond just as night descended. 

To understand my position exactly it is necessary 
for me to remind the reader that I was a stranger to 
the habits and customs of civilized life. I had been 
reared, as it were, in a tent on the prairies of Texas, 
and had made but two short visits to a civilized country, 
where houses and fences were a part of the surround- 
ings. These were unfamiliar scenes in my Texas home, 
and were unlooked for, and such a thing as a window- 
glass I did not dream of. 

I took my course across the prairie toward the light, 
and was compelled to go around thickets and other 
natural obstructions until at last I came to a high 
rail fence. I clambered over into an open plowed field. 
Across it I encountered a high picket fence. The tops 

39 



40 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

of the pickets were sharpened, and I had considerable 
trouble in getting over, but I succeeded at last and 
found that I was in a pen of horses and other kinds 
of stock. I crossed the pen and encountered another 
picket fence. This I also climbed, and made straight 
for the light, which was some eight feet above the 
ground, shining through a narrow door. Asl came 
under it I saw that I had to climb up quite a distance, 
over logs laid one on the other, to get inside of the 
small door. I took off all of my plunder, set my gun 
down, and hung my bow and quiver of arrows upon 
it, and climbed straight up to it. 

Through the opening I could see my mother sewing 
by a table with a candle burning upon it, and in an 
adjoining room I could hear the voices of several men 
conversing, my father among them. As I reached the 
opening I attempted to enter, and my head and my 
face encountered an invisible obstruction which was 
shattered into fragments, and made quite a noise as it 
rattled on the floor inside of the room. I attempted 
to withdraw my head as my mother raised her eyes. 
She uttered a scream, and I dropped to the ground 
and heard her shriek, " Indians." I darted under the 
house as I heard the commotion I had been the cause 
of, and clambered up on one of the floor sills between 
the joists, and lay upon it as still as a squirrel. 

Soon lights began to shine in every direction. They 
took charge of my paraphernalia and looked under 
the house in every direction. I heard " Deaf Smith " 
say that my outfit was that of a Comanche scout. 
When this declaration was made there was a short 
consultation among the men, and soon I heard a drum 
sounding, and then another and another, and the as- 
sembling of men in numbers. I laid as still and silent 
as possible, not daring to move, until I was almost in 
a cramp, and I listened until the voices of the men died 
away and I could hear no sound of them. 

I was wondering if it was not safe for me to get 
down and try to make my escape when I heard the 
rustle of a dress, and stooping down I peeped out 
and saw my mother in the faint light of the young 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 41 

moon standing just where I struck the ground as I 
slid from the window. My face had been cut by the 
shattered glass as I withdrew my head, and I was 
bleeding a httle, a drop here and there. I dropped 
from my hiding-place and said: 

" Ma, it's Lamar." 

She recognized my voice and clasped me in her arms. 
We entered the house, and she stanched the blood 
and washed my face and hands. As I did not have on 
any clothing except a small cape made from the soft 
hide of an unborn buffalo calf, which was simply used 
to keep the weight of my load from cutting my shoul- 
der, she proceeded to make a long shirt, that reached 
below my knees, from one of my father's old ones. This 
she put on me and then took the band of bear claws 
from my hair. With her shears she clipped my hair 
short, and combed and washed it and my scalp for some 
time, until it seemed that she had fully scalped me, 
and my head was as tender as if it had been skinned. 
She then washed me over and over and over again, 
and then put me in her bed. There was a " dry 
norther " blowing, though not very cold, but when 
she put me in a featherbed and covered me up my 
skin felt as if it were on fire, and I was in torture. She 
talked to me and I understood every word she said, 
but I could not reply in English, as I had forgotten 
my native tongue. I would answer in the Indian 
vernacular. 

When my father and the other men who were with 
him returned, my mother told them who their Indian 
was. I was brought out, and I thought that they 
were going to shoot me, so I again said, " Ma, it's 
Lamar." This was all the Enghsh that I could say. 

In this crowd of men around me I knew General M. 
B. Lamar, after whom I was named ; also old " Deaf 
Smith," Captain James G. Swisher, James H. Ray- 
mond, " Milt " and Munroe Swisher, and several mem- 
bers of the Texas Congress, which body was at that 
time in session. Many of these men were boarding at 
my father's, and it was gratifying to me that I knew 
them all, but exceedingly awkward that I could not 



42 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

talk to them. Old "Deaf Smith" could speak Co- 
manche, but could not hear my reply. He said that I 
was only an Indian decoy, and sent as a spy among 
my own people to murder them, and that I ought to 
be taken out and hanged. It made my blood boil to hear 
him say this, and I could have shot him with as much 
delight as I would have shot a panther or sneaking 
coyote. 

I told them that I had not seen an Indian for months, 
and that I had come from the Rocky Mountains all 
by myself, and that not an Indian had come with me. 
This they did not believe, as the distance was so great 
a child my size could not make the journey alone. Nor 
could I convince a single one of them. My father 
wanted to whip me until I would tell them the truth, 
but General Lamar said it would do no good — that 
the best thing to do would be to send out scouts on 
my back track, and see if I was alone, and to be pre- 
pared for any emergency by keeping the army under 
arms and ready. This they did. 

I was so uncomfortable in bed with my nightclothes 
on that as soon as everything was asleep but the 
sentinels out on the prairie, I crept out of bed and 
crawled out into the yard, and, throwing my gown 
under my head, I lay down between the roots of a 
large live-oak tree that grew in the back yard. I was 
soon sound asleep and did not wake until nearly sunup, 
when I crawled back into the house without making 
any disturbance. The soldiers, under the skillful 
guidance of Tonkaway and Caddoe Indians, took my 
back track and followed it up to and beyond the San 
Saba River. They were gone some ten days and re- 
turned, reporting that so far no Indian traces were 
found, and that I had no companions, and no following 
friends; that I was absolutely alone in all my journey 
from the San Saba to my home. 

During the ten days the soldiers were absent I was 
closely watched and my every movement noted. I 
kept close to my mother, for I was afraid of old " Deaf 
Smith," and thought he would kill me if he got a fair 
chance. During those ten days I made considerable 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 43 

progress in regaining the use of my tongue, by con- 
stant practice with my mother, and she learned much 
of the Comanche language. I got so I could converse 
in my native English. 

Mother made me new clothes, and fitted them to me, 
but the torture in having to put them on and wear 
them was fearful. As I had not had any on for four 
long years, every part of my body was as impervious to 
heat and cold as was my face. I would wear them 
while in or about the house, but when I was off from 
the house, or alone, the first thing that I would do 
was to disrobe and enjoy the freedom of my limbs, and 
ease my tortured hide. 

My life was not one of pleasure, and I did not enjoy 
my homecoming as I had expected. All I said or did 
was misconstrued. The children of the neighborhood 
would make faces at me, and call me " Indian, spy," 
and all sorts of names. I bore it all with Indian sto- 
icism, and made no reply, but it would not have been 
healthy for one of them to have met me alone in some 
out-of-the-way place, for I would not have hesitated 
to kill him as I would a wolf or panther. I con- 
sidered them the worst enemies that I had on earth, 
having robbed me of my fair name and given me one 
of derision. All I said and all the hardships that I 
had endured were laughed at, and I was considered a 
menace to the community. I told my mother my every 
thought on this hne, and asked her if she would be 
sorry if I went back to the Indians. She told me not 
to mind what my persecutors did, that I had performed 
feats beyond the comprehension of the ordinary mortal, 
and hence my deeds to them were but lies ; that all 
would come right in the end, when I was better under- 
stood. She gave me all the comfort that lay in her 
power, but my own heart was sore and I strongly 
contemplated returning to my little Indian playmates, 
where at least I was appreciated. 

At last it was determined to send me away to some 
distant school, where my Indian life was not known. 
When I found this out I felt a great rehef, for home 
was not what I had pictured it on my long and lone- 



44 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

some journey across those wild desert wastes. It was 
a torture to live in it and I welcomed anything that 
promised a respite. I was to be sent to Professor 
Bingham's school in North Carolina, among the hills 
and mountains of that grand old State, and I felt a 
secret joy at the coming change. 

One morning the carryall was made ready and my 
father, the negro driver, and I got in. With an extra 
pair of horses led by another negro we set out on our 
overland journey to the Old North State. 



A 



CHAPTER V 

Parting with my mother — Run away from Professor Bing- 
ham's school — Home again — Sent to sea — Life on the 
Vincens — Return home in December, 1846 — Join Perry's 
expedition to Japan in 1853 — Explorations in the Far 
East. 

I WILL not recount the incidents of my trip, as they 
made but little impression on me at the time. I was 
too glad to get away from the home that had been 
such a terrible disappointment to me. Strange 
thoughts flitted through my brain. I loved my mother 
with a passion that was sacred to me, and I would have 
given my life willingly to save her even a pang, but I 
could not be with her, and life for me was a blank with- 
out her. 

Those long-ago days now rise before me in all their 
vividness. As I pen these lines, nearing the seventy- 
seventh milestone in life's rugged pathway, I feel the 
loving kiss yet burning on my lips where she pressed it 
as she bade me " Good-by." There are some things 
in our life that time does not eff^ace, and this is one 
of them. They are like the brand of red-hot iron 
that sears the tender hide of the bleating calf; once 
burned in it lasts as long as life. I can see the last 
wave of her hand as she watched us move off across 
the prairie, and the picture is branded in my brain. 

After about a month or more on the road we reached 
Professor Bingham's school. I begged my father not 
to enter me under my own name, as there was a chance 
of my name having reached there from Texas, through 
the newspapers. If it should be recognized, the very 
thing that I wanted to avoid would confront me again, 
and I would certainly leave the school and return to the 
Indians, for I would not undergo in this school the 
tortures of suspicion that I had labored under in my 
own home. He respected my wishes, and I was enrolled 
under a new name. 

I was soon a favorite in the mess hall, as well as 

45 



46 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

campus. My ball playing was as good as the best, 
for in the Indian game " shinney " I was an expert, as 
I had played it for years with my little Indian team 
on a field many miles in extent, not limited to the nar- 
row lines of our campus. I was often the first choice 
in the " toss-up," as we called it, and for two long 
weeks I was happy as a boy could be in my position. 
But a cloud hovered over my horizon. At all schools 
there are some who are envious of others, and our school 
was no exception to the rule. One boy accused me 
of doing an act of which I was entirely innocent, and, 
without giving me a chance to disprove the charge, 
the professor gave me a severe chastisement. This 
raised a demon in my heart. The next day being 
Saturday, we had a big ball game, in which the profes- 
sor took a hand. I was on the opposite side and I 
laid my plans so as to get near him. As we both made 
for the ball I was a little quicker than he, but I waited 
until he shoved his stick forward and covered the 
ball, when, without hesitating, I let drive with all my 
might an upper stroke. Glancing up his stick, I struck 
him a fearful blow, unhinging his lower jaw and driv- 
ing some of his teeth down his throat. To the out- 
siders it appeared to be an accident, but I knew that 
the professor would not so regard it when he recovered. 

That night I determined to leave the school and go 
to some other place, but I wanted to meet the fellow 
who was the cause of all the trouble. I met him, and 
such a drubbing as he got at my hands that night he 
never forgot. 

I took what money I had, and with only the clothing 
I had on I scaled the college walls and footed it to 
Newbern, on the coast. There I crawled aboard a 
large schooner that was taking on a load of lumber 
for Galveston, Texas, and for three days I hid in the 
hold until I could feel the steady swish of the sea and 
the long swell of the waves. Then I came on deck and 
took the crew and ofllcers by surprise. I told the cap- 
tain my full story, concealing nothing. It made the 
right impression upon him, and he sympathized with 
me, and made me his friend forever. He said that 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 47 

he, too, had run away from school and his home for 
unjust punishment in his early youth, and he knew 
just how it made me feel. 

We were some time at sea, owing to adverse and 
stormy weather, and I soon became familiar with every 
part of the ship, and each line and rope. I took delight 
in climbing to the crow's nest and watching for passing 
vessels, and the wild freedom of the winds and waves 
had a fascination for me that I had never felt on the 
land. During that trip I made up my mind that I 
would be a sailor and make the sea my home. 

We reached Galveston without accident, and I went 
from there up to Houston by boat. In Houston I 
met the proprietor of the stage line that ran to Austin, 
and was given a seat in the coach. I reached home all 
right, and was clasped in my mother's arms again. 

I had been home two days before my father arrived 
from his long return journey from Bingham's school. 
He had been delayed by a visit to his own father at 
Pontotoc as he came back from North Carolina. His 
surprise was great at seeing me, and my explanations 
did not seem to satisfy him in all things. He would look 
at me in such a way that I hated to be alone in his 
presence. I felt that there was doubt in his mind of 
every statement I made. 

I gave my mother a straight and clear statement of 
my adventures at the school, and the cause that led 
to my striking the professor ; how I aimed to kill him 
for the way he had treated me. I told her of the 
thrashing I gave the boy who had lied to the pro- 
fessor, and caused me to be so unjustly whipped, and 
I saw her shudder at my words. She told me that I 
did wrong, and that my father would send me back ; 
that I must apologize to the professor, and to the 
young man who was the cause of all my trouble at 
the school. When this plan of going back to school 
was presented a spirit of unrest took possession of 
me, and I made up my mind that I would bid adieu 
to all home ties forever, and go at once to my Indian 
friends in the far West. I let my old negro nurse into 
my secret and she informed mother of my intentions. 



48 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

I made every preparation to leave. When father found 
it out, instead of being angry and punishing me, he 
said that he had no intention of sending me^ back to 
North Carohna, but that I could stay at home and be 
with mother as long as I would behave myself and 
be a good boy. 

That night I fell asleep in my mother's lap, and the 
world had a fairer and broader view for me. I had 
a feeling of perfect rest that night such as I have rarely 
since felt. My intense love for mother seemed strength- 
ened tenfold, and I never wanted to be out of her sight. 
Such feelings and such love can only enter our lives 
once in a lifetime. Its memory clings to us sacredly 
until we " cross the Great Beyond." I have felt it 
on the frozen shore of Greenland, on the burning sands 
of Sahara, in the jungle wilds of Asia and Africa, in 
the lonely watches of the midnight hour on the track- 
less sea, and on the snow-capped peaks of the Hima- 
layan and Andean mountain chains. It never dies. It 
is a part of the " arcana " instilled into us by the 
Hand above. It binds us to the Great I Am, and will 
reunite us in the dim hereafter. 

I remained at home a few short months or maybe 
only weeks, hunting and fishing, generally alone, as 
I wanted none of my former playmates about me ; 
they only reminded me of my first homecoming from 
my Indian captivity, and the least word or remark 
about my being an Indian decoy or spy would have 
given them trouble. 

One morning, after a long, hard ride on a bucking 
bronco, I was informed that father and I were going 
to Pensacola, Florida, to see a kinsman, Lieutenant 
M. F. Maury, of the U. S. Navy. In a few days we 
bade mother " Good-by," and with a negro boy as my 
body servant and " Jake " the carriage driver we drove 
to the town of Houston, on Buffalo Bayou. Here 
we took a steamboat and went into Galveston. From 
there we took passage for New Orleans on the old 
Maria Burt, and on reaching that city we took a 
steamer for Pensacola by way of the lakes. 

One evening we reached Pensacola, and went aboard 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 49 

a side-wheeled steam gunboat, the Vincens. That even- 
ing we attended a banquet given by the officers, and 
about eleven o'clock I crawled into a hammock that 
was swinging against or near the side of the vessel, 
and was told by Lieutenant Maury to rest there as 
long as I wanted to. I was soon asleep, and when I 
awoke the ship was out of sight of land. My father 
was not on board, and I was alone on a strange ship 
among entire strangers. Lieutenant Maury was the 
only one I had ever seen before. My feelings were 
strung to the utmost tension. I felt that I had been 
kidnaped, shanghaied, or stolen. A feeling of resent- 
ment arose in my bosom, and I determined to get even 
some way at the first opportunity and leave them all. 
I saw there was no way to escape then, as there was no 
land, and that I would have to wait until we entered 
some port. 

Our vessel I heard from the sailors was bound for 
the Arctic regions, and that probably our first land 
would be at the Dutch Cape Farewell on the southern 
shore of Greenland. This was not very soothing to my 
pentup feelings, but with Indian stoicism I said noth- 
ing. I obeyed every order with alacrity, and in a few 
days I had made many friends and become a favorite 
among the men. I loved to climb the ropes, sit far up 
in the rigging, and feel the sway of the vessel and 
watch for ships on the horizon. I soon became fond 
of the sea and my surroundings on the ship, but the 
reflection that I had been made a prisoner never for a 
moment left me, and the thought constantly rankled in 
my breast. I began the study of the higher branches 
of mathematics under Lieutenant Maury, and was soon 
familiar with the use of the quadrant, the compass, 
and the log, and could rattle off the names of the 
various sails and lines and parts of the ship, and many 
nautical phrases common to the sailors. I did not 
grieve over my captivity, but made the best of it. 

I learned to love the sea, and to this distant day 
I am happy when I hear the roar of the breakers and 
see the long lines of waves as they dash upon the shore 
and send the spray in clouds far up into the air. To me 



k 



50 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

it is the grandest music that can greet the human 
ear. I love it in its quiet grandeur; I love it when 
the " Storm God " heaves its breast and shakes its 
shores in awful thunder. To me it is like a mirror of 
eternity, the looking-glass of Nature, and of Nature's 
God. 

We made our first land in Boston harbor, and here 
many of us went on shore, and I was struck with the 
wild recklessness of a " Jack Tar " on the land. He 
is as different a being ashore as it is possible to im- 
agine. He seems to be, and is, as helpless as a child. 
He needs a guardian here more than anywhere on 
earth. 

At Boston we took on vast stores of all kinds of 
provisions suitable for an Arctic expedition, and I was 
soon, I thought, to be a partaker of all the hardships 
and rigors of a polar exploration. Lieutenant Maury 
believed that there was an open polar ocean, and we 
were going to find and prove it. I made up my mind 
that if I had to go to the North Pole, that it would be 
on a ship and with a crew of my own choosing; so 
a few hours before sailing I left the Vincens. I met 
the captain of a whaling vessel and went aboard his 
ship, thus giving the officers and the crew of the Vin- 
cens the slip, and a day or so after she sailed we, too, 
left for a two years' cruise in the far-off frozen zone. 

We headed for Greenland, and when off Cape Fare- 
well coasted along the western shore as far as Upper- 
navik, and then northwest, until we were in latitude 
79° 13' north, and longitude 70° 10' west. Here we 
spent the winter, frozen hard and fast. On the 17th 
of July, 1846, we were anchored in the wake of a 
grounded iceberg in latitude 74° 48' north, and longi- 
tude 66° 13' west, cutting up and trying out the fat 
of several large sperm whales we had in tow. 

On the 26th of July the two vessels of Sir John 
Franklin's expedition, the Erehus and Terror, stood 
by, and asked about the channels and islands to the 
north and west of us. We gave them all the informa- 
tion as far north and west as we had been. We were 
fully in sight of them for more than twenty-four 



\v/ 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 51 

hours. I believe that we were the last ship and crew 
that they ever saw. 

One winter in this cold, bleak, frozen region was 
enough for me. I never want to see it again while I 
live. The eternal silence that reigns fills you with 
awe and an uncanny dread — a something that you 
cannot comprehend. Everything is unnatural. The 
aurora borealis is simply indescribable, and has to be 
seen to even catch a faint realization of its splendor 
and grandeur — words cannot paint them. The most 
wonderful are seen when the thermometer registers 
ninety degrees below zero. It is the most sublime of 
all Nature's handiwork. It is the " flaming sword " 
that God placed in the hands of the cherubim to guard 
the portals of the Garden of Eden when He drove the 
man of the living soul from out its walls. 

I visited many islands and points of land in the 
Arctic regions, and was surprised at the vast amount 
of fossilized remains of animals, birds and beasts, as 
well as plants, that belong only to a warm tropical 
climate. In fact they are of larger size, and could 
only have lived in a hotter country than the tropics 
now present. I think that this idea will strike almost 
any observer when he first beholds them. But I will 
not trouble you with a minute description of these. 
We were very successful in our voyage, and carried 
into Boston a full cargo of oil. 

In December, 1846, I reached Mobile, Ala., and 
made a trip to Pontotoc, Miss., where my parents were 
on a visit to my grandfather. 

In January, 1847, I went on board the U. S. frigate 
Sabine, and on the 7th of February we opened fire 
on the city of Vera Cruz, and continued until that city 
surrendered. I was with the battery of guns that was 
sent to the rear of the city, and while on the vessel 
was at the starboard bow gun, a twenty-pounder, as 
I remember it now. 

After the bombardment and surrender our vessel, as 
well as the St. Lawrence, the Susquehanna, the Missis- 
sippi, and one or two others, was sent to the Far East 
into the China Sea, and with Bolingbroke we con- 



52 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

summated a treaty with China. I marched afoot from 
Tsin Tsen to Pekin over a marshy, level country, 
densely populated, and was the first American boy 
to enter the city. I spent several months in China, 
and around Hong Kong Island, and went with some 
natives far up the Yang Tse into the mountains, five 
hundred miles from the coast. I made many observa- 
tions for my kinsman. Lieutenant Maury, to aid in his 
work, " The Physical Geography of the Sea." 

In 1853 I joined in Perry's expedition to Japan. 
Our vessel was dressed as a merchantman, and sent to 
destroy the pirates off Sasebo. This we did most ef- 
fectually, not letting a single one reach the land. They 
thought that we were a merchantman aground, and 
came in swarms to capture and destroy us, but we 
were not aground, only ready and waiting for them. 
As they approached us in their long, low, rakish-look- 
ing boats, we could see that their intentions were 
sinister, and we prepared for them. Our rigging was 
filled with Chinese sailors, and not an American seaman 
was visible. When they were within two ship's cables 
of us the Chinese began to hail them and told them 
to go back. They paid no attention to their cries, 
but began shooting at us. It was amusing to see the 
Chinamen tumble down on deck and scoot for cover. 
The Japs fired from long single-barreled, match-locked 
muskets, that took two to fire. One held and sighted 
the gun and the other touched it off, just as boys now 
do their brass Fourth of July toy cannons. These 
" Long Tom " muskets were almost harmless, and their 
bullets rattled against the sides of the ship like peb- 
bles thrown against the walls of a house, and did as 
little damage. 

We waited until they swarmed around us and threw 
their grappling hooks up on deck, then we turned our 
guns, with double charges of canister and grape, upon 
them, and our marines, with their rifles, sent all of 
them to " Davy Jones' Locker." I suppose that we 
destroyed about two thousand in all, and we put a 
quietus upon these pirates and their descendants 
forever. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 53 

Our ships, that had gone around the eastern shores 
of the islands, met us in the Japanese Channel, about 
150 miles south of Hakodadi; and we took twenty-six 
of the princes and princesses of Nippon, and brought 
them to the United States. We kept them here at 
school for fifteen years, educated and civilized them, 
and sent them back to their native land. From the seed 
thus sown in 1853 the present status of the Japanese 
Empire had its origin. 

From the Far East I returned in 1849, and in 1850 
I went back and remained in India, China, Persia, 
Arabia, Egypt, and Syria. 

In 1855 I again visited my Texas home. While in 
the Far East I explored parts of India, and went to 
the heads of the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmapootra, 
the Yang-tse-Kiang, and thence to the Hoang, or 
great Yellow River in northern China. I followed 
the Great Wall of China, about fifty miles or more 
west of where it crosses the Hoang Ho, then turned 
back east and went on until I reached the great gate 
lying north of Pekin, some two hundred miles east of 
the crossing of the Yellow River. 

While in the Himalayan Mountains, near Dumjah, I 
was made a Buddhist priest, and took several orders. 
This gave me entrance into their secret archives that 
are hidden alike from Christian or Mohammedan. They 
are sacredly kept apart from all eyes, save those of the 
ancient order of the Aryan Sanscrit Priesthood. Only 
those of the pure white race ever see them. No yellow 
or black or mixed blooded priest or layman ever lays 
eyes on these records. In tha Vale of Kashmir I 
found the purest blood of the Aryan people. Here, 
beyond the Hindoo-Koosh Mountains, they speak of 
Alexander the Great as if he had only been gone a few 
short years ; all call him uncle, and claim kin with 
him. These people had never been subdued by the 
English. 

In a series of lectures that follow this biographical 
sketch I give you some of the things I learned while a 
sojourner among these brave and true people, the 
only pure descendants of the ancient founders and 



54 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

civilizers of India, who ages agone migrated westward 
from the shores of ancient America to this region. 
There are many traditions among their archives that 
point to America as the place from whence they mi- 
grated, but I will not indulge in speculative thoughts 
here, as I am only giving you a brief story of my 
life and wanderings. But before leaving the dreamy 
land of these Hindoos I cannot help but give you a 
description of the beautiful temple near Agra, on the 
banks of the Jumna, a tributary of the holy river of 
these ancient people. It is called the Taj Mahal, and 
was erected many hundreds of years ago by Prince 
Jehan, as a monument to himself and wife. It is im- 
possible to paint it with words or pen, so that you can 
realize its splendor and its majestic grandeur, as there 
is no building on earth that can compare with it. When 
you stand in front and look up at its massive dome, 
covered with hammered gold, and its pure white Parian 
marble walls and columns, all rising to a height of 
296 feet above you, gleaming in the clear light of a 
bright, unclouded sun, you seem to feel, as you lift 
your eyes upward, that you are gazing at the " Great 
White Throne " of the Living God, and the longer you 
gaze the more impressive becomes the scene. Go in- 
side and the same feeling of awe comes over you. The 
massive columns, wreathed in vines of living verdure 
from whose petals the dew and raindrops seem to glit- 
ter and fall and the breezes to fan the clinging ivies 
that twine around them, are as smooth and cold as 
polished glass. Place your hand upon these columns 
and you will find each vine, each petal, each dewdrop 
a precious stone, inlaid into the cold white marble, 
without a flaw or blur. Each dewdrop that glistens 
in the soft subdued light is a pure diamond of the first 
water, and the colored leaves and vines are of colored 
quartz an inch and a quarter long, hexagonal in shape 
and not larger than a cambric needle, fitted so close 
that it takes a microscope to discern the junction. 
There are fifty-two of these great columns thus dec- 
orated. 

Now let us visit the tomb of Jehan and his wife, and 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 55 

see its wonders. Here a marble wall, six feet high and 
eighteen inches thick, encloses but does not hide it, for 
J9U peer through a real veil of pure marble, so cut 
and pierced that it does not obscure the vision. You 
are lost in a maze of wonder. This solid piece of mar- 
ble seems in reality but a gauze veil, thin and light, 
apparently so fragile that you could lift it with your 
breath. But feel and measure it ; it is eighteen inches 
thick and six feet high. At his wife's head there is 
a small table, apparently about two feet wide and 
three feet long, and seemingly an oil painting of a 
beautiful, quiet mountain home scene. It really is 
a mountain home. You look up at the mountain tops, 
and down into the sweet peaceful glens and valleys, in 
perspective, such as no artist of modern times has even 
attained with pencil or brush. View it closely with your 
microscope, and you will find that it, too, is made of 
small needles of various hued pure quartz, no single 
stone larger than a cambric needle, but each color 
blended one into the other with a master hand, so true 
to life that the whole is a living and real picture of the 
birthplace and early home of the dead woman. I asked 
my guide if any value had ever been placed upon this 
work of art, and he said that several visitors from Eng- 
land and France had offered as high as a hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars for it, but that it was in reality 
worth several times as much ; that there were no artists 
in the world that could even polish the delicate stones 
into their hexagonal shapes in a lifetime of sixty years, 
much less to select the true colors, shades, and the 
minutiae necessary to paint this picture with quartz 
needles. The great Taj Mahal has no equal on this 
earth, and many thousands of years of our civilization 
will roll away before it can have a duplicate. 

I hope the reader will pardon these thoughts that 
fill my mind — they are not a part of my life, but the 
memory was so strong that I could not help the di- 
gression. 

One of the best-remembered journeys that I ever 
took was from the port of Sallee, on the west coast of 
Africa, to the upper regions of the Nile, in the Nubian 



56 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

Desert. The port of Sallee is about 125 miles south 
of Tangier, and from there I went ahnost due east 
to the city of Fez, the ancient capital of Morocco. 
Here I fitted out a " desert kit," and in a large cara- 
van, numbering some five thousand or more, I became 
a unit. I will be as brief as possible in giving you a 
picture of life on the greatest " sandy sea " on the 
earth. 

The scenery of the first three hundred miles south of 
Fez is one of real gloomy grandeur. There are some 
wonderful valleys, rich in the loveliest foliage and 
verdure. At times we were eleven thousand feet above 
the level of the sea, and in the clear air the views were 
grand. After leaving the influence of the wadis, or 
rivers, leaving all signs of vegetation behind and enter- 
ing the desert proper, the change was something never 
to be forgotten. The long line of the caravan, in 
single file or in groups, would stretch out in an un- 
broken line for miles. The dust would almost strangle 
those in the rear on the lee side. At times you could 
see but a few feet, and the heat was something fearful. 
I have seen my thermometer register, in the shade of 
the tent at nine o'clock in the morning, 140 degrees 
Fahrenheit, and twice during the prevalence of a simoon 
I have seen it rise to 170 degrees, and at night it would 
drop to 28 degrees above zero. 

At our evening camps thousands of yards of car- 
peting would be spread on the level sands, and hundreds 
of the young dancing girls, very scantily clad in soft, 
clinging, bright-hued garments, would take their places 
on the carpets, and, to the sound of weird wind and 
stringed instruments, with drum and tambourine ac- 
companiments, give us varied specimens of their vo- 
luptuous " cooche coochie " dance, lasting far into the 
night. The wonderful fascination that these dark- 
eyed and dark-hucd maidens exercise over these desert- 
born Bedouins is very remarkable. They hold them 
with a hypnotic power, and sway them as the winds 
do the branches and foliage of the trees. Thus to the 
wanderers of these sandy wastes is life made tolerant. 
Throughout the long weary day of marching over 



IVIY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 57 

the black and hot sands they look forward to the 
night of revelry and dancing, or to the fascination of 
gambling. 

There is no twilight or rosy dawn in the desert. The 
moment the sun sinks a pall of darkness falls over 
the earth, just as if the lamp had been extinguished 
in your chamber. The day bursts upon you like press- 
ing of the electric button. The sun simply flashes out 
at once without warning, and ushers in the day with 
all its brilliancy. Not a day passes that you do not 
see and feel the influence of the magic mirages. They 
certainly are of hypnotic birth. They hold you with 
an unseen power, and present to your wondering gaze 
the most beautiful pictures of lovely scenes, where you 
lie under the shade of wide-spreading trees, beside the 
margins of foaming rivers or grand lakes, over whose 
surfaces the snow-capped waves chase each other and 
break in sparkling foam at your feet. Or you see the 
peaceful village of your own nativity, clearly defined 
against the horizon of the desert. At other times the 
whole plain will be filled with beautiful groves of trees 
and green, grassy, cool, shady spots, with here and 
there a sparkling brooklet, with splashing waterfalls 
and small placid lakes sleeping in vales between rolling 
hills, and the camels and horses assume the appearance 
of houses and towering steepled churches, and the dark 
boulders of sand-polished stone rise as frowning cas- 
tles, set upon unapproachable heights, all as real and 
true to the vision as the reality. 

For five months this great caravan was my home. 
I soon got accustomed to the daily routine, and with 
the wild roving Bedouins I felt as much at home and 
at ease as I did on the wild Western plains with my 
Indian friends in my earlier days. When we reached 
the valley of the Nile, near the northern boundary of 
the Nubian Desert, our great caravan divided. Part 
went south to Khartoum, and I with another part went 
down the great valley to the city of Cairo. I wandered 
among the vast piles of ruins from Karnak to the 
mouth of the Nile, and examined every feature of them 
in detail as I did the fossilized remains of the flora 



58 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

and fauna of the icy regions of the far north. The 
more I studied them, the more thoroughly I became 
convinced that it was here that ancient civihzation 
ended instead of began. These works were not those 
of men who were just learning how to build. Their 
teachers and architects had had the experience of 
countless centuries of time. It was this idea, conceived 
on the top of the largest of the pyramids, as I looked 
down at the other eight of the great structures that 
form this group, and the lion-man-headed sphynx, a 
thousand years older than the pyramids themselves, 
that gave me the impetus to wander the world over, in 
search of the ancestors and teachers of the builders of 
these pyramids and ruined cities. For twenty-seven 
years I gave my time and money to this endeavor. I 
left no stone unturned and braved every danger of 
land and sea with this end in view. In my lectures 
on " America, the Old World," I have given you my 
conclusions on the subject which are not germane to 
this biographical sketch. 

From Egypt I surveyed the pathway of the Israel- 
ites across the Red Sea into the Holy Land. I camped 
upon the top of Sinai and listened to the weird sounds 
that are produced by the sands blown upward upon its 
summit and then, slowly trickling down its sides over 
large and small cavities, make mournful sounds. As 
the winds blow gentle or strong and shift these musical 
sands in large or small quantities across these holes, 
some of which are deep and others shallow, soft, low 
sweet notes or weird unearthly sounds are produced. 
To one filled with superstition, and to the ignorant, 
these sounds have a terrifying effect. Fear and 
dread seize upon the poor creatures, and they shake 
like an aspen leaf. I bathed in the dense, slimy waters 
of the Dead Sea, and in the muddy, frothy stream of 
the Jordan, and in those of Galilee. I mapped the 
streets and walls of Jerusalem, stood on Golgotha, and 
wandered in the garden of Gethsemane. I ran a line 
of levels from Joppa through Jerusalem to the Dead 
Sea, and found that the Dead Sea was 1296 feet below 
the level of the Mediterranean Sea. 



CHAPTER VI 

Enlist in Russian army — Siege of Sevastopol — Rewarded 
for marksmanship — ^Back to Austin — Death of my 
mother — Explorations in Central and South America — 
Enlistment in Confederate Army at Pensacola. 

From the shores of the Holy Land to the Crimean 
coast is not more than a thousand miles, and when the 
alHed armies of Turkey, France, England, and Sar- 
dinia flocked into the Black Sea, through the Dar- 
danelles, I, too, went on board one of our vessels, the 
Osprey. I landed at Balaklava, and went at once into 
the Russian lines, and enlisted in the troop of KioskI 
Cossacks that composed the body guard of Prince 
Gortschykoff^, and took part in the siege of Sevastopol. 
This city held out for thirteen long months against 
the combined allied armies. The British alone lost 
over ninety thousand men ; the Turks nearly twice as 
many, and I have never heard what the French and 
Sardinians lost. This was the greatest and the blood- 
iest war that had raged since the Napoleonic days of 
the French empire. Lord Ragland of the British Army 
was the nominal head of the allied armies, but he was 
not much of a general. I do not care to go into the 
merits or demerits of this war, but shall be brief in 
my memoirs of it, although at the time it was a stu- 
pendous event in my life, for I was only twenty-five 
years old when I entered the employ of the Tsar of 
all the Russias. 

To give you a clear understanding of the situation, 
it will be necessary for me to give 3'^ou a geographical 
description of Sevastopol and its defenses. The Cri- 
mean peninsula is about 120 miles long, from its neck 
at Perekop, where it is only five miles wide, with the 
Black Sea on one side and the Sea of Azov 
on the other, the Black Sea lying on the west and the 
Sea of Azov on the east. From Perekop on the north 
to Balaklava on the south it is 120 miles. 

59 



60 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

The city of Sevastopol is on an arm of the Black Sea 
that stretches inland for several miles, and comes to a 
sharp point where the River Tcheniaya flows into it, 
making a splendid, deep harbor, several miles in 
extent. From this arm, about a mile east of the 
junction of the river, another arm of the sea forks, 
running almost due south for a mile and three-quar- 
ters. This also makes a very deep and fine harbor. On 
both sides of this latter arm, or harbor, and around its 
southern end sits the city of Sevastopol. The Crimean 
Peninsula from the city of Sevastopol juts out into 
the Black Sea almost due west for ten miles, and then 
turns, curving south and east, to the port of Balaklava, 
about sixteen miles south of east. This peninsula is 
indented with deep bays or arms of the sea, making 
the coast line very irregular, and in outline much like 
an Indian flint arrow head. The bays are formed by 
deep ravines entering the sea along the south side of 
the Sevastopol peninsula. The sea rolls against a 
rugged, rock-bound shore, overlooked by high bluffs, 
until you get to the port of Balaklava, where there is 
a small but safe harbor. 

The battlefield of Inkerman is about five miles due 
east from Sevastopol, and on the banks of the Tcher- 
naya River. The grounds around the city of Sevasto- 
pol are a succession of hills and ravines, each having 
a name. The main works, like the Malakoff, Redan, 
Mamelon Hill, etc., lie due east of the short arm of 
the sea, on what is known as the inner harbor. The 
ship docks, the barracks, and government works all 
lie on the east side of this inner harbor. Fort Nicholas 
on the west and Fort Paul on the east guard the mouth 
of this inner harbor, and all along the outer harbor 
line for several miles are splendid fortifications. The 
first bay west of the city of Sevastopol is called Quar- 
antine Bay, and on its eastern point is Fort Quaran- 
tine ; to the east of it is Fort Alexander. At Fort 
Alexander begins a series of batteries that extend en- 
tirely around Sevastopol, crossing Careenage Ravine, 
and ending on the shore of the outer harbor at a bluff 
known as the White Works, so named on account of 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 61 

the color of the soil of which they are constructed. 
The MalakofF sits between the Dock Ravine on the 
west and south, and the Careenage Ravine on the east, 
but much nearer Dock Ravine. The Mamelon Hill lies 
nearly east of the MalakofF, and the allied armies spread 
their lines on a great rim outside of all these works. 

The Russians were under Prince GortschakofF, Prince 
MenschekofF, General SaimonofF, and that great engi- 
neer, General Todleben ; and the whole army, of course, 
under Czar Nicholas. It was from the heights of the 
MalakofF I saw the smoke and heard the guns of the 
famous charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, 
rendered famous by the poet Tennyson ; and it was 
from this same point of view that I saw a part of the 
great battle of Inkerman, in which the Russian army 
of relief was driven back. Every ravine by which the 
Russians could approach had been doubly fortified, 
and charge after charge of the most desperate kind 
was repulsed by the allied forces. 

The MalakofF was the key to the inner harbor, and 
the whole end and aim of the besiegers was to capture 
or reduce it. Here the bloodiest and most persistent 
efforts were made by the Turks and French. The 
Turks were the most reckless and daring of all the 
nations that opposed us. They are but wild fanatics, 
and believe that at death they will go straight to the 
Heaven, to a Paradise where they will have three hun- 
dred dishes of angel food served three times a day, 
on three hundred golden dishes, by a band of three 
hundred lovely female slaves ; and where they will live 
in eternal bliss without a wish ungratified. This belief 
renders them fanatics, and induces them to court rather 
than shun death. It was in this war that the sharp- 
pointed minie ball was first used. It was hollowed like 
a lady's sewing thimble, with a solid point; the thin 
rear end by expansion filled the grooves of the rifle 
and prevented windage, thus giving the projectile 
greater force and speed, and reducing the curvature 
of the course of the bullet to a flatter plane. I had 
three rifles, one made by Mills of Kentucky, one by 
Phihp Lambert of Galveston, Texas, and one by Schni- 



62 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

der of Berlin, Germany. I would sit in a porthole of 
the MalakofF by the hour, and pick off the sappers 
and miners of the Turkish army. The Russian officers 
would watch my expertness through their glasses, and 
express their wonder in no unmistakable language. 
My rifle would be loaded by one of the soldiers and 
handed up to me. I would watch for the appearance 
of the head of a Turk as he heaved a spade full of earth 
up, and as it came in view I was ready ; my ball would 
crash into his skull, and the spade would fall to the 
earth from a graspless hand. At each shot you could 
tell that my aim was true by the flight of the spade. 

The most terrible bombardment that has ever jarred 
the earth in all history previous to that time took place 
while I was a defender of the Malakoff". The whole 
combined forces of England, France, Turkey, and Sar- 
dinia concentrated every available gun on both land 
and sea onto the citadel, and for nine days and nights 
there was a continuous fire poured into it. When they 
began to batter its walls with this iron hail it was three 
stories high; when they prepared to charge it was 
only a mass of debris, but stronger than ever, for we 
had strengthened it on the inside, and when they 
charged they met a terrible fire from under the earth 
as it were, against which they had no chance. As long 
as life lingers I can never forget the ceaseless roar 
and jar of that bombardment. I have seen the blood 
trickle from the ears of the men, as they slept, from 
the concussion of the explosion of the shells. Hundreds 
of these missiles of death were twenty-one inches in 
diameter, filled with musket balls glued to their inner 
sides with sulphur. This horrid shell would fill the 
cavities and bombproofs with a stifling gas that was 
terrible. We stood this awful thunder and roar with- 
out a moment's rest or cessation for nine days and 
nights. When the awful roar was over it seemed that 
every faculty that I possessed was numb, or dead, and 
it was many years after before I was myself again. 

For the part I took in the defense of the MalakofF 
and for my marksmanship I was given the Iron Cross 
of Peter the Great, by Prince Gortschakoff, by com- 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 63 

mand of the Czar Nicholas. It was presented to me 
in the presence of the whole Russian army, drawn up 
in a hollow square, on the naval parade ground at 
Sevastopol. 

In leaving the Crimea in a few hours' sail I saw one 
of the most sickening scenes of my whole life. The 
sea was covered for miles with the floating carcasses 
of dead soldiers, and our paddle wheels would stir them 
up like driftwood. They were soldiers who had died 
with the cholera, and had been weighted and thrown 
into the sea. The weights had became detached, the 
swollen, bloated bodies had risen to the surface, and 
the whole sea was a reeking mass of rotting carcasses 
of human beings. It was reported at the time that 
the British alone lost ninety thousand men from the 
cholera. 

When I look back at those long-past days and think 
of the awful scenes that I beheld in and around Sevas- 
topol, a shudder creeps over me and I try to forget 
it all, but memory is too strong. At some unwonted 
noise in the silence of the night, when roused from a 
sound sleep, I hear that awful bombardment of the 
MalakofF and feel the deafening roar. It is only for 
a moment, yet it leaves its impress on my brain. 

On the trip home I was like one freed from a terri- 
ble bondage. The soft, still beauty of the shores of 
the Mediterranean Sea, as we steamed by them, seemed 
a land of enchantment. For hours I would sit alone on 
the deck, and in a dreamy way throw the horrors of 
Sevastopol behind me. When we reached New York 
I hastened aboard a vessel for New Orleans, and, on 
reaching that port, I was soon on board a coaster for 
Galveston. I reached Austin, Texas, in the latter part 
of May, and, after resting up a few days, I went with 
my mother, who was in the last stages of consumption, 
up to the Lampasas Springs, about sixty miles from 
Austin, to try the effect of the water and outdoor life 
upon her. But it was of no avail, and at the end of a 
month we returned. On the 13th of July her pure 
spirit winged its flight back to the God who gave it. 
In the lonely watch, by the side of her inanimate dust, 



64 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

I sat the livelong night, and reviewed every event of 
my whole life. When they laid her to rest in the vil- 
lage cemetery I felt as one deserted upon a barren isle 
in a trackless sea. 

I left at once for the wilds of Central and South 
America. Until December 21, 1860, I was an explorer 
and civil engineer in some part of that region of the 
earth. Under Henry Meigs, who had a contract un- 
der Totten and Trautwine, I aided in building a railway 
across the Isthmus of Panama, and for a while in 1858 
I acted as private secretary to General M. B. Lamar 
(after whom I was named), while he was minister from 
the United States to Nicaragua. In the latter part of 
October, 1859, I came back to Texas with him, and 
on the 19th of November, about ten o'clock in the 
morning, he passed away from an apoplectic stroke. 
I returned at once to Managua, and thence to Lake 
Titicaca, and began a long journey up the ancient 
macadam road that was built by the first civilized peo- 
ple of earth. I followed this road, with all its mean- 
derings, for fifteen hundred miles ; past the ruins of 
hundreds of cities, and through vast forests of petri- 
fied trees, whose trunks have lain for countless cen- 
turies ; across the ruined walls and sculptured statuary 
of many ancient cities that were in ruins and deserted 
ages before the pyramids of Egypt or the foundation 
stones of Baalbec or Palmyra were dreamed of. 

In the last days of December, 1860, I reached the 
mouth of the Ulna River in Honduras, and learning 
from a small fruit steamer just out of New Orleans 
that Abraham Lincoln, one of the old abolitionists 
and one of the worst enemies of my sunny Southland, 
had been elected President, I gave up my work and 
went at once to the United States. Finding that 
South Carolina had already withdrawn from the Union, 
I went with a party to Pensacola, Florida, and aided 
in the capture of Forts McCrea, Barancas, the Re- 
doubt, and the Navy Yard. I insisted that we should 
above all others take Fort Pickens, and send Lieutenant 
Slimmer home, but I was not in command and was 
overruled. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 65 

I stayed in and around the port of Pensacola, doing 
guard, and other duties, until some time in the month 
of March, 1861, when I went up to Jackson, Miss., to 
see my father, whom I had not seen since the death of 
my mother. He had married again, and was Hving 
about fifteen miles from Jackson. Here I spent a 
few days, and hearing that a company was being or- 
ganized at Jackson to go to the front, or seat of war, 
wherever that might be, I at once joined this com- 
pany ; it was called the Mississippi Rifles, and the orig- 
inal company was at one time commanded by Jeff Davis, 
and was a part of the regiment he commanded at the 
battle of Buena Vista in the war with Mexico. For 
the first time in my life I enrolled under my own name. 
We went at once to Pensacola, and on the 13th of 
April, 1861, we were regularly mustered into service. 
We elected Moses Phillips, of the Yazoo County com- 
pany, our colonel. 

On signing the muster roll each man put down after 
his name the term of days, months, or years he would 
serve in the army. When I signed I wrote in a clear 
and distinct hand, " Forty years, or the war." I was 
then in my thirty-second year, and I thought that by 
the time I was seventy-two my life's race would be run, 
and I could retire with an honorable record, spend the 
remainder of my life in some pleasant, quiet spot, and 
dream of the past. Many of my comrades, to. whom 
I was an entire stranger — I had never met a single one 
of them before I became a member of the company 
— exclaimed at my foolishness in writing such a long 
term of enlistment after my name. I cited the civil 
wars of the Romans, and the thirty years' war of the 
Spaniards, and the war of the Roses in England, and 
said that I thought that we could fight as long as any 
people on earth, and that the Yankees would do the 
same; that they had all the ships and could hire all 
the foreigners, and bring as many as they wished from 
every clime under the sun. I said that we would have 
to fight our battles alone without any aid from abroad, 
as we did not have a friend among all the nations of 
the globe. They laughed and made fun at my predic- 



66 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

tions, and said that the war would be over and all of 
them except me be at home before Christmas. I was 
guyed at every point by the boys as one who " knew 
it all." I had been a hermit apart from my fellow- 
man so long that their jibes fell on dull and unheeding 
ears, and I kept on the even tenor of my way. In later 
years my old comrades have made amends and ap- 
plauded my acts in those long-ago days, and profited 
by the example I set. 

My recollections of those early days of the beginning 
of the great Confederate war are growing dim, as 
the years go by, but there are some things that cannot 
be forgotten, and several are indelibly impressed on 
memory's tablet. 

Once we were issued rations of condemned salt-bar- 
reled beef. The boys resented this and we dumped 
each man's share on a great improvised litter, and, 
with our muskets draped with strips of black cloth tied 
to each bayonet, with fife and drum muffled, we marched 
around the entire encampment, then behind the com- 
missary's tent, where we dug a deep hole and deposited 
the salt junk, popped three caps each in military style, 
and set up a headboard with this inscription in white 
chalk : " Here lies old Ned, strong in life, in death 
still stronger." 

We suffered from various kinds of insects, especially 
flies and mosquitos. The latter were very annoying, but 
fleas were the most tormenting. They seemed to be 
the product of the sand of the beach — they were all 
over the face of the earth and clung to you like leeches. 
I hung my hammock as high as I could reach between 
two small pine trees. Before going to rest I would 
strip on the ground, hang my clothing on an adjoining 
limb of a tree, and, with a brush, dust myself from 
head to foot. Then I would break as hard and fast 
as I could run, and leap up to my hammock, and wipe 
the sand and fleas that might have clung to me as I 
ran. Thus I would be able to avoid many of these 
vicious, blood-thirsty pests, otherwise they would keep 
me in a constant torment during the night. When 
we bathed, many of the boys were speckled with their 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 67 

bites, until they looked as if they had measles, or some 
skin disease. 

My friend, Sergeant Louis Burt, was taken with 
typhoid fever and I went to the hospital to assist in 
nursing him. At this time the measles broke out in 
camp, and many of the men were very ill. The first 
death in our ranks was our colonel, Moses Phillips. 

On the 20th of June I was transferred from Com- 
pany A, of the 10th Mississippi, to Company K, the 
Burt Rifles, of the 18th Mississippi Regiment. My 
father was captain of the company, and Sergeant Louis 
Burt's father was colonel of the regiment. It was 
stationed at Manassas, in Virginia. I left Pensacola 
on the evening of the 20th of June, and on the 25th 
I reached Camp Walker at Manassas, and reported for 
duty. I received a letter from Sergeant Burt, thanking 
me for my kindness in nursing him through his long 
spell of illness, and Colonel Burt also received one from 
Colonel Robert A. Smith, of the 10th, my former cap- 
tain, calling his attention to my kind ministrations 
to his son. These letters were very gratifying to me, 
as I was an entire stranger to every man in the 18th 
Regiment at that time, except, of course, my father. 



CHAPTER VII 

Life in camp — Opening guns of the war — The first battle — 
My father's bravery — Intense thirst saves me from an 
untimely grave — In the hospital — On guard. 

Life in camp was very dull, and on the 17th of July, 
in company with a few of the boys, we went on a 
scout hunting for fruits and vegetables, chickens, or 
any edibles to add to our camp fare. Many of the 
citizens around Manassas were truck farmers, and had 
been in the habit of supplying the markets of Wash- 
ington City with supplies. Many of them were full- 
blooded Yankee South-haters, and strong Unionists, 
acting as spies for the Yankee army during the move- 
ments of our troops in and around Manassas. 

The morning we went on our scout we came to a 
peach orchard on the east side of the pike that led to 
Washington. Several of the boys were up in the trees 
gathering peaches, when a Yankee cavalryman came 
down the pike from the direction of Washington, and 
ordered them out of the grounds. I was on the out- 
side of the orchard farthest from the pike, and had a 
good view of all the surroundings. When I saw that 
it was a Yankee soldier that had given the order to 
get out, I turned to Hal McGee of my company and 
said that we had as much or more right to gather 
peaches there than that Yankee had, as we were on 
our own Southern soil, and that we should not obey 
him or any other Northerner. Hal agreed with me. 
The boys were leaving the orchard and climbing over 
the back fence, when I got up on the fence, and in a 
loud tone told the Yankee that if he did not leave and 
mind his own business I would send a bullet after him. 
He rode right up to the fence from the pike, stuck 
his horse's head above the rails, and said: 

" What did you say ? " 

68 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 69 

I repeated my order, and he threw open his breast 
with both hands and said: 

" Shoot, you d— Rebel! " 

I did not hesitate. The white face of his horse and 
the white front of his open breast was a fine target. I 
raised my old Savage pistol and fired. My bullet sped 
true to the mark, and he tumbled from his horse without 
a sound. His horse whirled off up the pike toward Fair- 
fax Court House. I went over to where he lay on the 
edge of the pike, and most of the boys followed me. We 
held a consultation and concluded that we had better 
bury him where he lay. We sent one of our negroes 
to the nearest house to borrow spades and picks, and 
on his return we dug a grave and laid the Yankee in 
and covered him up. I took a part of a plank from the 
fence and with a knife and pencil I wrote upon it this 
obituary : 

" A Yankee host, a mighty hand, 

Game down to take our Southern land. 
But this low barren spot 

Was all that this d d Yankee got." 

Some of the boys were indignant at the want of feel- 
ing I displayed in the matter, and made bold to say 
so, reproving me openly and in no uncertain ways. I 
told them that they would in the end be more callous 
and used to death ; that I had not a particle of feeling 
in the matter ; that I was only a soldier, and that it 
was my duty to kill an enemy and defend my country. 
It was for this purpose that I had enlisted, and I 
would so continue until a bullet from an enemy sent 
me to join the great band that had gone before to the 
shores of eternity. The killing of this one soldier was 
the first death that many of them had ever witnessed, 
and I was often asked if it did not make me feel bad, to 
which I replied that I had no feeling in the matter 

The advance of Scott's great army of invasion began 
on the 18th of July, and our pickets and the Yanks 
had their first skirmish. We were held in readiness 
all day to move at a moment's warning, and listened 
to the irregular firing. At about daylight on Sunday 



70 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

morning, the 21st, we heard the opening guns of the 
first great battle of the Confederate war. Every man 
was ready and anxious to meet the advancing Yankees, 
and to test the prowess of the Southern arms against 
the North. The firing was steadily approaching and 
we felt and knew that our forces were being driven 
back by the Yankees. I saw many a lip pale as the 
sound of the cannon grew louder and nearer. Suddenly 
a shell flew over our heads, and every man at once as- 
sumed the position of a soldier. A courier dashed up 
and handed a dispatch to General D. R. Jones, our 
commander, and in a few moments came the sharp 
command : 

" Forward, double-quick, march." 

We trotted in the direction of the roll of musketry 
and the quick, heavy crack of the rifled Parrott guns. 
After about a mile and a half of double-quicking, with 
here and there the hiss of a deadly minie, the shriek 
of a shell, or the hum of a solid shot above our heads, 
we halted. We could hear the yells of the Confederates 
and the huzzahs of the Yanks ; louder and nearer 
they came. The excitement was intense, and we won- 
dered why they would not let us go on. Several of 
our officers and a few men went forward to the top 
of a hill that was in front of us, and were gone some 
time. In the meantime the roll of musketry was in- 
creasing, and we were standing stock-still in an open 
field, but near the skirts of a small belt of timber. 

For a while the incessant roar of the musketry in- 
creased, and the huzzahs of the Yankees seemed to 
grow fainter, and we saw our officers returning. Again 
a courier galloped up and gave our general another 
dispatch. We were about-faced, and in a double-quick, 
hurried back past our starting point, and on down in 
the direction of Union Mills, far on our extreme right, 
some five miles from the fight at the Henry house. We 
crossed Bull Run and stopped under a hill, and were 
ordered to rest in line. Many of the men looked pale 
and exhausted, and fell down from the long run of 
five miles. I leaned on my musket and retained my 
position in the ranks. My father rested against one 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 71 

of the small saplings close by. Presently an old 
gentleman of General D. R. Jones' staff, Colonel J. J. 
B. White, came dashing up from our rear and rode 
to the front. Orders were given to " fall in," and the 
lines were instantly formed. Shells began to burst 
around us in close proximity. I saw one cover Colonel 
White and his horse with smoke and dust, but it did 
not injure him. 

We were moved forward in the direction of the can- 
nonading, and crossed over a hill into a small valley, 
through which flowed a small branch, and in a crooked 
road, with our left in the front, we marched alongside 
of this branch. Its banks were about eight feet high 
above the water and almost perpendicular, with black- 
berry vines between us and the branch. 

While in this narrow valley we came in sight of the 
Yankees posted on a hill, directly in our front, and 
with a line of skirmishers to the right and left of us 
on high hills. I could look right into the mouth of 
a ten-gun battery, and could see a brigade of regulars 
of the old United States Army on the brow of the hill 
below it. We heard a voice sing out in a clear, sharp 
tone: 

" Are you friends ? " 

Not a sound was uttered by us, but our hands were 
raised for silence, and the signal passed down the line. 
Our colors were rolled up in an oilcloth cover, and 
never unfurled during the day that I am aware of. 
We marched straight ahead and kept our eyes on the 
Yankees in our front. Again came the voice from 
the Yanks, but we paid not the slightest attention to 
it, and marched on toward them. They ordered us 
to halt, but we did not obey. Then came the command, 
" Ready," and involuntarily each of us cocked his gun, 
but did not halt. We heard the command given by 
the Yanks, " Aim," and saw every one of their guns 
come into position, like clockwork. Before the word 
" Fire " rang out, every man of us, with the exception 
of a dozen or more, jumped through the blackberry 
thicket into the bottom of the branch, and the two vol- 
leys of the Yanks were poured into vacant space, and 



72 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

we felt the wind of the bullets as they passed over our 
heads. 

Some of the guns of the boys were discharged as 
they reached the bottom of the branch. Cass Olten- 
berg's gun jarred me as it went off not more than a 
foot from my head. Just after the Yankees gave us 
their volleys from the front, rear and side, someone 
gave the order for us to charge. Up we rose out of 
the branch, and, with a loud yell, rushed straight at 
the nearest body of Yanks As we mounted the top of 
the steep bank and went toward the hill on which the 
Yanks were, we came to the top of a steep bluff that 
we could not get down. There they poured a galling 
fire into us which we returned, but it was foolish for 
us to stand exposed to the fire of a whole brigade of 
infantry and ten rifled Parrott guns. Father at once 
ordered us to follow him, and led us by the right flank 
into the rear of their line. Every man who was in the 
sound of his voice followed him. I was shot just as we 
reached the top of the bluff", and lay there until ten 
o'clock that night. I heard the first volley our boys 
poured into the brigade from their rear, and heard the 
awful roar of the retreating Yanks as the volley, de- 
livered in their rear, surprised them. They thought 
that they were surrounded and cut off" from their line 
of retreat. 

For his daring act my father was complimented by 
General Beauregard in his official report of the battle. 
I have tried to give you a brief description of the 
part I took in this great battle, which should have 
been one of the most decisive of the whole war, for we 
had the Yankees at our mercy, and could have entered 
their capital. This was the desire of Generals Joseph 
E. Johnston, E. Kirby Smith, Stonewall Jackson, and 
Beauregard, but President Davis ordered otherwise, and 
prevented us, thus turning our great and glorious vic- 
tory into nothingness. 

I can never forget those long hours I lay, on that 
July Sunday, in the blazing sun after I fell on the 
top of the bluff". The roar of the cannon was around 
me, and the incessant hiss of the deadly minies, as they 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 73 

threw the dust mto my eyes and ears, was fearful. I 
could not move hand or foot. We sometimes live a 
whole lifetime in a few short minutes, but here I had 
hours, and they were fearfully long ones at that. I 
was not in any very great pain, as I was completely 
paralyzed. My neck was twisted, and my chin rested 
against my backbone; I was doubled up into a short 
space, and wedged in a small gully. 

Toward night everything grew dim and confused, 
and the silence of death fell on the field. Close by me 
a httle drummer boy was lying, cut nearly in two by a 
cannon ball. His blood and entrails had been scat- 
tered over me until I, too, looked as if torn to pieces. 
Near my feet lay Captain McWillie, a son of Governor 
McWillie of Mississippi. I saw my father, as he passed, 
raise his arm to his eyes to hide my body from his view, 
and pass on with his men to the front. It was not 
long before my eyes began to grow dim; everything 
had put on a lurid glare, then it faded to a yellow 
tinge, then to a dark blue, and finally to a black; I 
tried to speak, but my tongue and throat, like the rest 
of my body, were numb, and would give no response 
to my efforts. My brain and thoughts alone were 
active. I felt no pain, only a tingling sensation, just 
as you feel when any of your limbs are asleep. 

Some time in the night I heard the approach of voices 
and the tramp of men. Soon I heard the sound of 
picks and spades and caught the gleam of lanterns, 
and knew a burial party was on the field, and that 
surgeons, with their attendants, had come to pick up 
and care for the wounded. Again and again I tried 
to speak, but no sound came. Presently I felt the 
jar of the picks and spades as they dug a grave by 
my side, and then I felt a strong hand grasp my head 
and another my feet, and lift me clear of the ground. 
There was a sharp click, and then a loud buzzing sound 
in my cars, and my whole body was in an agony of 
pain. A fearful thirst tortured me. I spoke, and my 
friends let me drop suddenly to the ground. The 
jar awoke every faculty to life. I asked for water, and 
at oncG a strong light was flashed in my face, a rubber 



74 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

canteen applied to my lips, and I felt a life-giving 
stream of cold, refreshing water flow down my swollen 
throat, and seemingly into every part of my frame. 
I was carefully lifted from the ground and placed upon 
a caisson box of a captured cannon. I saw them lay 
the mangled form of the drummer boy in the grave 
which they were preparing for me. 

I was carried to a large house, across Bull Run, 
several miles from our part of the battlefield, and laid 
on a mattress on the floor in a large room with fold- 
ing doors. There were some nine or ten other wounded 
men in the room, and all were South Carolinians, as I 
soon learned from their conversation, and belonged to 
the 5th Regiment, which was a part of our brigade. 

Soon after the South Carolina burial party had re- 
moved me from the field, my father, with another party 
of our own regiment, passed over the ground, and 
seeing the grave of the little drummer boy, took it 
for mine. Upon returning to camp my father ordered 
a casket from Richmond to send my body home in. 

About five days after the battle we were moved from 
the house and placed in comfortable cots in hospital 
tents, and every care given us possible under the cir- 
cumstances. On the day that we were moved into the 
open air, my negro boy George was passing by and 
I hailed him. My neck was swollen fearfully, my thigh 
was black up to my waist, and I was in some pain. My 
negro recognized my voice, and came at once to where 
I was lying. The look on his face made me smile. 
Knowing the superstition of the negro, I asked him 
if my father had escaped unhurt in the battle.'' He 
stammered for a while before he could reply, and said : 

" De bullets just raised two big welks, one under 
Old Massa's left arm and one clean across his back, like 
you hit him wid a club ; and I done patched up de 
holes de bullets make." 

I told him to go and tell father where I was, and to 
come and take me to our own hospital. He said : 

" Lord, Mas Lamar, Old Massa done saunt to Rich- 
mond for your coflin, and gwine to send you back home 
in it." 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 75 

As soon as he delivered this information, he broke 
off in a trot for our camp, and in an exceedingly short 
time I saw my father and Dr. Holloway, our surgeon, 
with George and Eli, my father's body-servant, come 
in sight, and I felt that all was well. I was moved to 
our own regimental hospital, and under skillful nurs- 
ing was able to get up and move around, but Drs. 
Isom and Holloway both said that I would never again 
be fitted for infantry service. My casket came, and 
the remains of Captain McWillie were sent home in 
it. I read a very flattering obituary of myself in the 
Richmond papers, and learned of the details of the 
great battle, in which I took so small a part. 

I could relate many incidents that are yet fresh in 
my memory of that, our first encounter with the Yanks, 
but it would make this volume too large and tiresome. 

We were joined by the 13th Mississippi and the 8th 
Virginia, and sent to Leesburg, soon after the men were 
rested up. Our brigade was then composed of the 13th, 
17th, and 18th Mississippi Regiments, and the 8th Vir- 
ginia, all under General Nathanael Greene Evans of 
South Carolina. Toward the last of July we went into 
camp near the town, and pickets were placed along 
the banks of the Potomac. Captain Duff's company, 
of the 17th Mississippi, was at a large spring above 
Leesburg, and our Company K, of the 18th Mississippi, 
near Goose Creek, below Leesburg. 

Instead of being discharged, I took a transfer to 
Company I, Captain John D. Alexander's company, 
the Campbell Rangers, from Lynchburg, of the 2d 
Virginia Cavalry, commanded at the time by a Colonel 
Radford, and afterward by Colonel T. T. Munford. 
Our company was attached to Evans' brigade, and we 
had to do picket duty from above Point of Rocks, down 
to near Dranesville, only a short way out from Washing- 
ton City. 

In the cavalry company to which I had been trans- 
ferred T was an absolute stranger, not even having a 
single personal acquaintance. Among the men was a 
young married man, William Moore by name, who was 
also a stranger in the company. I think he was from 



76 INIY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

Botetourt County, near the line of Bedford County, 
just under the Peaks of Otter. Young Moore and I 
soon formed a close friendship that was cemented and 
strengthened in a common cause, and we loved with a 
love as close as that which brothers feel. We were as 
inseparable as twins. We ate and slept together. On 
picket and guard duties we were always together, and 
we had little pocket editions of our favorite poets, his 
being Burns, and mine Byron. Together we would sit 
under the shade of overhanging rocks or trees while 
on the lonely picket posts, and read poems from our 
favorites to each other. 

On a certain day, the 6th of August, we were to- 
gether below Goose Creek and not a great way from 
Dranesville, when we received a large bundle of delayed 
mail matter, the mails having been cut off by the move- 
ments of the army before the late battle of Manassas. 
In that mail was a long and patriotic letter from 
Moore's wife, and in it a ferrotype of his two little 
babes. He read me parts of this letter, and while we 
were reading the papers and commenting on the battle 
there came a hail from a Yankee picket across the Po- 
tomac opposite us. He asked if we would exchange 
papers with him, if we had any late ones. We at once 
answered that ;^e would. He asked us to meet him 
in the middle of the river. I arose and walked down 
to the water's edge, divested myself of clothing, and, 
taking several copies of the Richmond papers in my 
hand, I waded out and met my Yankee friend, and 
made the exchange. For a while we stood and con- 
versed about the great battle, and he kindly invited 
me to cross to his side of the river and take dinner 
with him, as it was about dinner time. I accepted his 
invitation, and together we went into his camp where 
there were about thirty Yankees, under command of 
a lieutenant. I put on a Yankee overcoat, and sat 
and conversed with these men for some half hour or 
so, and told them of the part I took in the battle. 
Now and then we could hear the crack of a rifle, up 
or down the river as the pickets would fire at each 
other, and the lieutenant said that If we would stop this 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 77 

firing at our post, he would. I at once agreed to this, 
and he drew up an agreement in duplicate, and we both 
signed it. At this moment dinner was served, and I 
ate a hearty meal, better than I had had since the 
battle. 

After dinner they brought clay pipes with short 
stems, made of chalk or some such substance, and a lot 
of tobacco stems, cut up into fine and coarse strips. 
I lit one and the taste and smell was not at all like 
tobacco. I asked if they could give me a chew, and they 
gave me a short, narrow plug of a very dark-looking 
substance that did not at all taste or resemble tobacco. 
I turned to the lieutenant and asked if this was the 
kind of tobacco they used all the time, and he replied 
that it was what the commissary issued to them, and 
that they had no other. I then told him to let my 
friend of the morning return with me and I would 
send them some real old Virginia chewing and smoking 
tobacco. He agreed, and the Yank and I returned 
to our side of the river. I gave Moore a description 
of my trip, and told him for what purpose the Yank 
had returned my visit. We gave him several plugs of 
fine Lynchburg chewing, and half a dozen twists of 
the very best smoking tobacco. I took pains to tie 
them all to a stout pole, long enough to feel his way 
while crossing the river, for any deep holes that he 
might stumble into. After he returned, we saw a 
good many of them come down to the river, and strip 
and take a swim. They thanked us for the tobacco, 
as they swam halfway across, and said that they were 
glad that they could take a bath without having to 
dodge bullets, and that they hoped the war would 
soon be over and we could all go home. Moore and I 
sat on the bank in full view, watched their sports, and 
read the Northern version of the great battle, and the 
various causes of their defeat. The principal excuse 
was our use of masked batteries and our overwhelming 
numbers. 

When night came I went on guard duty at six 
o'clock, and Moore made down our pallet in a small 
shady place, sheltered by a dense foliage, just back of 



78 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

the spot that overlooked the river, and just under 
where we had sat and read the papers. A small ravine 
led into the river, and a wet weather spring trickled 
down from near our sheltered camp. Moore used both 
our blankets, and a lot of pine straw and brush made 
a nice soft bed, and he retired to dream of home and his 
loved ones. I walked my beat in silence and kept a 
watchful eye upon the river, listening to the bugles of 
the Yankees and the sounds from their camps. An 
occasional song would swell upon the air until the 
tattoo would sound, then all sank into silence, except 
the cry of the sentinels, such as : 

" Post No. 9, ten o'clock, and all's well." 
Just before the midnight hour arrived, it became a 
little chilly, and I went up near the spot where we had 
read the papers, and gathered a lot of dry pine limbs 
and brush, and built up a bright, blazing fire. I could 
see several such, far up and down the river on the 
opposite side. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Comrade Moore shot on relieving me of picket duty — My 
vow of vengeance— Writing the poem, " All Quiet' Along 
the Potomac " — Stricken with measles — " The massacre 
at Ball's Bluff " — Our life at winter quarters near Lees- 
burg. 

When my fire was at its brightest, I stepped down 
to where Moore was in a deep sleep, and roused him 
to take my place on guard. He rose at once and made 
his way to the fire. I knelt down and was smoothing 
out the wrinkles in our bed, sheltered from the direct 
rays of the firelight, when I saw a flash on the walls 
of the ravine and heard the thud of a bullet. I rose and 
saw Moore, with his gun resting on the ground and his 
arms stretched out, sink to the earth. I ran at once 
to him, saw a gush of blood pour from his skull, and 
his brains scattered over the pile of papers on which 
he had fallen. In large bold type were the headlines 
staring me in the face, " All quiet along the Potomac 
to-night." I could see nothing further — the words 
burned in my brain and obscured everything else. 

I dragged his body away from the fire, and for a 
while was dazed. At last reason asserted itself. I 
felt that I was a murderer — that I had, without provo- 
cation, murdered my dearest and best friend in cold 
blood. I trembled like an aspen leaf, as I gazed upon 
his cold, bloody, inanimate form, and thought of his 
wife and orphaned babes in their far-off mountain cot. 
I felt that I had kindled that fire, and invited him to 
his death. 

I gathered his things together, and made a bundle 
of them for the express. I took my place on the picket 
line, and, no matter where I turned my gaze, I could 
only see his blood and brains scattered on that paper, 
and hear the thud of the bullet that had sent him into 
eternity. While in this state of mind, I wondered why 
I had kindled that fire and sent my comrade to his 
long home.? When I remembered the compact I had 

79 



80 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

that day made on the opposite shore of the river with 
the Yankee officer, and remembered the crowd that had 
gone in swimming in full reach of my rifle, it all be- 
came plain, and I had a breath of reason for the kin- 
dling of that blaze. I did not feel that I was a 
murderer any longer, but that I had trusted too much 
in the honor of a treacherous foe, and was only guilty 
to that extent. I breathed a sigh of relief, and watched 
the opposite shore with a vengeful eye. 

Toward the breaking of the day I again looked upon 
the form of my friend, and above his dead body I reg- 
istered a solemn vow to high Heaven that I would 
avenge his death, and during the continuance of the 
war would never again trust to the promises of any 
Yankee, under any consideration. How well I kept my 
oath of vengeance, I let the annals of my country tell. 
Sufficient to say that when I glanced along the barrel 
of my rifle and touched the trigger, it was with a 
prayer, and the bullet winged its flight to the heart of 
my enemy with the thought of my dead comrade to 
guide it. Never did I let an opportunity to send one 
to his long home escape me. I felt a fiendish delight 
in shooting them. 

It was while in this frame of mind that I penned 
these verses to the memory of my murdered friend, who 
sleeps in a lonely grave, far from the home of his loved 



" All quiet along the Potomac," thej say, 

Except here and there a stray picket 
Is shot, as he walks on his beat to and fro, 

By a rifleman hid in a thicket. 

It's nothing; a private or two now and then 
Will not count in the news of the battle. 

Not an officer lost; only one of the men 
Moaning out all alone the death rattle. 

All quiet along the Potomac to-night. 

Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming; 

Their tents in the rays of the clear autumn moon 
Or in the light of their camp-fires gleaming. 

A tremulous sigh, as a gentle night wind 
Through the forest leaves softly is creeping, 

While the stars up above, with their glittering eyes. 
Keep guard o'er that army while sleeping. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 81 

There's only the sound of the lone sentry's tread 
As he tramps from the rock to the fountain. 

And thinks of the two on the low trundlebed 
Far away in the cot on the mountain. 

His musket falls slack and his face dark and grim 

Grows gentle with memories tender, 
As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep — 

For their mother, may heaven defend her. 

The moon seems to shine as brightly as then, 

That night when the love yet unspoken 
Leaped up to his lips and when low murmured vows 

Were pledged to be ever unbroken. 

Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his eyes 

He dashes oflF tears that are welling, 
And gathers his gun close up to its place 

As if to keep down the heart's swelling. 

He passes the fountain, the blasted pine tree, 

The footsteps are lagging and weary. 
Yet onward he goes through the broad belt of light. 

Toward the shades of the forest so dreary. 

Hark ! Was it the night wind rustled the leaves ? 

Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing? 
It looked like a rifle; Ah, Mary, good-bye, 

And the life blood is ebbing and splashing. 

All quiet along the Potomac to-night; 

No sound save the rush of the river; 
While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead, 

That picket's " off duty " forever. 

I did not write this in a day, but from the 6th until 
the 9th of August I strove to make it in accord with 
my feehngs. On the 9th it was complete as above, and 
I gave it to my comrades. Hundreds of copies were 
sent out by the boys of our brigade to friends, sweet- 
hearts, wives, and sisters, as well as mothers and 
fathers. I gave autograph copies to several ladies of 
Leesburg, among them Miss Eva Lee, the sister-in-law 
of the mayor of the town ; also to the Misses Hemp- 
stone. The latter set it to music and used to sing it 
to the boys to some familiar air. So many of the men 
wanted copies that I took a copy to the editor of the 
county paper, and had a thousand printed on small 
strips of paper. These I gave to whoever asked me 
for a copy. I think that all the members of my own 



82 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

and Captain Duff's company, of the 17th Mississippi 
Regiment, were given copies. Mr. J. H. Hewitt, a 
bandmaster, asked for a copy, and I gave him an 
autograph copy, and a written permission for him to 
set it to music. I think that at least five thousand 
copies went out to the pubhc from Leesburg, a month 
before the battle of Leesburg, or Ball's Bluff, as the 
Yankees called it. Early in September, several mem- 
bers of the 20th Massachusetts Regiment, U. S. A., in 
camp near Poolesville, Md., opposite Leesburg, were 
in possession of it and sent it home to their friends in 
the North at that time. On the 19th of August, 1861, 
I sent President Davis an engrossed copy, with my 
compliments, and received a nice letter in reply, which 
I took great pride in showing to the boys of my com- 
pany. Mr. Hewitt set it to the air that soon became 
familiar to every soldier in our army, and Mr. Julian 
A. Selby, of Columbia, S. C, pubhshed, and copy- 
righted it in the Confederate States, before it was pub- 
lished in the North. The first printed copy I saw 
of Selby's music was at Richmond, in the first days 
of November, 1861. I sent it to my father at Jack- 
son, Miss. 

I tried to throw into this poem the ardor of my in- 
most soul, so that to the soldiers that were along the 
Potomac in those wild heroic days of our great strug- 
gle, it would breathe the true animus of their souls. 
And I am satisfied that when a true soldier, be he of 
the Gray or Blue, reads that poem, he can see the 
stars shining through the tree tops that waved above 
his head in the silent watches on the lonely picket lines. 
He can hear the thud of a bullet as it strikes a tree 
or comrade; he can hear the clear notes of the bugle 
as it sounds taps and lights out; the far-off neigh of 
a horse, and the distant boom of a gun. It is replete 
with life, love, memory, and death; and it will live 
as long as the memory of that great Confederate war. 
It came straight from the heart of a soldier who was 
an active participant in that stupendous struggle, that 
never before had its counterpart on the face of the 
globe. It is a monument of word painting that will 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 83 

endure as long as the civilized white man exists on 
earth. Time and the plural actions of the elements 
of nature disintegrate the carved granite, and crumble 
into dust the brazen images made by the hand of man, 
but the thoughts are a part of deity, and can never 
perish. When given out to the world they go on the 
wings of the wind, sounding down the dim aisles of 
the temple of eternity, imperishable forever. 

It is with pride that I now look back through the 
lapse of forty-five years at those long passed days, 
and I need no more lasting monument or mead of 
wealth to leave as a legacy to my children and grand- 
children, than that poem, " All quiet along the Po- 
tomac." 

The routine of camp life and picket guard, with an 
occasional skirmish here and there along our lines, kept 
us from the terrible ennui that the soldier feels, but 
here and there nostalgia would assert its baleful in- 
fluence on some poor soldier. In September the camp 
measles became an epidemic, and we lost many noble 
men. I was stricken and carried to the hospitable 
home of the Rev. Mr. Nourse, a Presbyterian minis- 
ter, where I was kindly cared for, and, on the 19th of 
October, I resumed my place in the company and an- 
swered to roll call. 

On the morning of the 21st, as I was relieved from 
picket duty, just below Point of Rocks near the old 
Mason plantation, above Leesburg on the Potomac, I 
heard considerable skirmish firing below Conrad's Ferry, 
at Big Spring, where Captain Duff's company of the 
ITth Mississippi, was on duty. I put my horse into a 
gallop and was soon opposite them, on the river road, 
and could see that the Yankees had crossed the river 
and that our boys were giving them the best that they 
were able, under the circumstances. The company was 
retreating toward Leesburg, not all together, but In 
squads, each squad loading and firing as it fell back, 
but not seeming to be in a hurry or much excited. I 
kept abreast and a little in the rear, watching for the 
enemy, who was invisible to me. As I passed the west 
end of the old Ball field, I looked in the direction of 



84 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

Leesburg and saw the Confederates on the move. I 
could see a color or two flying, and could see handker- 
chiefs and small flags waving from some of the upper 
windows of the houses in the town. Suddenly, as I 
glanced my eyes across a field of shocked com in the 
direction of the river, I saw a Yankee come out of the 
woods nearly opposite me, get up on the back fence, 
and look, with his glasses, toward the town. I jumped 
from my horse, and, with the reins over my arm, I sent 
a rifle ball through him. He hung halfway across the 
fence, and there he was two days after the battle was 
over. I remounted my horse, after loading my rifle, 
and galloped into Leesburg, just as the 18th Missis- 
sippi was hurrying through. I joined them, as my 
own command was absent, and with my father's old 
company I went into the battle. 

For long years afterward this battle was called, in 
the Yankee histories, " The Massacre at Ball's Bluff." 
In reality it was a terrible slaughter of the lager beer 
Dutch from Philadelphia, under command of Colonel 
Baker. Our company was thrown forward as skir- 
mishers as soon as we crossed the corn field and entered 
the woods. We descended a gentle slope and suddenly 
came right upon a Yankee regiment only a few feet 
off^. We called for their surrender, and our guns were 
leveled directly in their faces. Instantly they reversed 
their arms and went through the motion of surrender- 
ing. Just at this moment another Yankee regiment 
obliquely to our right poured a volley toward us, and 
we turned and fired at them. Just as our front rank 
delivered their volley, the surrendered regiment poured 
a deadly volley into us at close range, and here we 
lost some of our best men, among them John Pettus, 
a son of our Governor. I had not fired and instantly 
sent a shot into the brain of the nearest Yankee, and 
like demons we drove our bayonets and clubbed guns 
into their treacherous ranks, sparing none. 

We dropped into a small ravine that ran parallel 
to the river. Our regiment was on the slope of a hill 
behind us and many feet above usl In our front was 
a thicket, very dense, of mountain laurel, and I could 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 85 

see nothing. To me it was like looking for a bear in 
a Mississippi canebrake, where the dogs are baying 
around you, and the animal not in sight. The little 
drain that I was in was about three feet deep, and 
a saphng about eight inches in diameter was just 
in front of me, not more than a foot from my head. 
I at once saw the great advantage and protection I 
had, if we could only hold our position. Soon the 
rattle of the musketry began, and the bullets flew high 
above our heads. The smoke rose in dense columns 
out of the laurel thicket, and the roar was deafening. 
We shot voUey after volley into this obstruction that 
hid our view, and soon the thicket seemed to melt, and 
disappear. Here and there a glimpse of a Yankee 
could be caught, and our fire from the skirmish line 
began to increase. Before an hour had elapsed the 
laurel thicket had been mowed down, and our field was 
clear. I then began to single out my Yank, and with 
a steady, deadly aim I hunted a belt buckle as my 
target. Every time I touched the trigger I thought 
of my murdered comrade, Moore, of the lonely picket 
hne, and of the morning treachery when John Pettus 
was sacrificed. 

Our ammunition was getting low, and the enemy in 
front of us some ten lines deep, seemed to increase in 
numbers, as the places of their dead were instantly 
filled. I was afraid that we would have to fall back 
from our chosen ground, but my fears were unfounded, 
for I saw the " powder monkey," in the shape of a 
member of our regiment, making his way up our ravine 
with an ample supply. My cartridge box and pockets 
were soon overflowing. I shot coolly and deliberately, as 
if firing at an ordinary target for a prize. I did not 
want a shot to go astray; and I don't believe that a 
single one did. Night had fallen and the flash of the . 
Yankee muskets threw sparks almost into our faces, 
we were so close to them. The fire seemed to be on 
the increase. I had torn most of the front of my 
shirt away, and used it on the end of my ramrod to 
keep my gun clean and unchoked, and, as I had to wet 
it each time by holding it a moment in my mouth, be- 



86 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

fore wiping the rifle out, of course I was as black and 
powder stained as I could well be. My hair and eye- 
brows were singed from the escaping flashes of my 
open gun tube on which the cap rested. 

About sundown, as the twilight began to grow dim, 
there came a clear and very distinct command to us 
from the rear : 

" Drive them into the Potomac, or into h ! G 

d 'em ! " 

With a loud and fiendish yell we arose as a single 
man, and, with our bayonets fixed, we made a quick 
dash at them. They broke, and yelling like fiends 
incarnate we pursued, each man doing his best to catch 
and bayonet a Yank. I singled out a big Dutchman 
who weighed about 250 pounds, but, do all I could, I 
could not gain much upon him. When close enough 
to hurl my rifle spear fashion at him, I did so, and 
as the sharp saber bayonet struck him full in the back 
he disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him, just 
at the edge of what I thought was a thicket of under- 
brush. I halted at the very edge of it, and as I halted 
I heard the thud of a heavy body falling far under 
me. My Dutchman had dropped over a bluff" onto the 
solid rock, fifty-two feet below us, and I had come 
very nearly following him. The discovery made me 
feel nervous for a moment, as I paused on the brink 
of the abyss. But I did not stop long. I heard the 
voice of my captain cry out, " Burt Rifles, rally on 
me ! " I snatched up a deserted musket, examined it as 
I ran, and gathering up a cartridge box and belt, I 
reached the captain, as he stood on the top of the bluff' 
looking down into the river. He said: 

" Do you boys see that boat load of Yanks out 
there trying to get away.f* Give them a volley, and 
don't let one escape you. They may be a part of those 
scoundrels that slaughtered us this morning. Ready, 
aim, fire ! " 

We poured a deadly volley into them, as they were 
huddled like turtles upon a log on a genial summer's 
day. We emptied the rear of the boat of its human 
freight, and the front end, which was overcrowded, 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 87 

went to the bottom, I suppose. Soon the water was 
covered with a mass of men strugghng and making for 
the opposite shore — but none of that boat load ever 
reached it. We stood and loaded and shot at every 
head, or wave, or riffle of water that appeared on the 
surface. 

When all was still I sank like a rock, exhausted and 
utterly worn out, right upon the top of the bluff 
where I had fired my last shot. When I awoke, a fine 
misty rain was falling, and I was wet and stiff. I 
could see men raising up from all around me with 
sunken, haggard looks and powder-blackened faces. 
The sun was high up in the heavens, as we began to 
look around us and ask for our commands. All were 
in the same boat, and no one knew who we were, ex- 
cept that we were on the banks of a river, and on the 
edge of the battlefield. That was all. We did not 
know the result of the battle — whether we or the Yanks 
had been victorious. We only knew that we had driven 
those in front of us into the river, and killed all 
we saw. 

Slowly each one of us got up and rubbed his eyes 
and looked at the comrade nearest him. Then we 
began asking each other what we had best do. I 
said, " Let's go back to Leesburg and find out where 
our men are." I was asked if I knew the direction to 
go. I said I did, and we all set out under my guidance 
and were soon in sight of the town. 

I am not writing a history of the great Confederate 
war — only the part that I took in it — and, as more 
than forty years have elapsed since its close, of course 
my memory is all that I have to depend upon. Yet 
that memory is indelible with many scenes and inci- 
dents that will never be erased until I cross into the 
" Great Beyond." 

For a few days after the massacre at Ball's Bluff we 
were moved about to various points, just to keep up 
our spirits, and not let us stiffen our joints by too 
much sleep and camp ennui. Daily guard duty, a few 
drills, and changing of camping places for our health 
was the order of the day. Soon came the question, 



88 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

where were we going to build our winter quarters? 
Where was the whole army going to spend the winter? 
This and other questions kept us with something to 
talk about. Our cavalry company began building log 
huts, with canvas tops and stone chimneys, on a slop- 
ing hill, facing the north and the river, just opposite 
the battlefield, and above Leesburg, and south of the 
road leading from Conrad's Ferry, and in full view of 
the Yankee encampment at Poolesville, in Maryland. 
With a good glass they were plainly visible from my 
shanty, and were not more than four miles away. 

During some of the bright, clear days in November, 
the Yankee batteries would occasionally throw a few 
shells at our shanties, and every man in camp would 
turn out to watch these iron Yankee visiting cards 
come over the river to call on us, and it got so that 
we felt something was missing if they failed to come. 

I loved the picket line, and would take the place of 
any of the men, in preference to the routine of camp 
life. I wanted to be actively at the front all the time, 
any many a bluecoat, from above Lovettsville on the 
river front, down to a point just above the head of 
Seneca Island, felt my bullet slip through his anat- 
omy — I never let a single chance escape me. I was 
frequently in the guard house or under arrest for 
picket shooting. Of course my shots would disturb 
the picket next to me, and he would fire his gun in 
the air, and thus the firing would go down the line 
until it reached the camp guard. The long roll would 
rattle, the men fly to arms, and form in line ready for 
an attack. In a few minutes would come the word: 

" It's nothing but that fool Fontaine. He's up to 
some of his pranks just to disturb the camp." 

I can truthfully say that I rarely fired my gun at 
a bluecoat that he did not fall. I can't say that I 
killed every one I shot at, but I shot only to kill. 

Our pickets had a very narrow escape one morning 
at Lovettsville. We were in the habit of entering the 
village every morning just at daylight, or a little be- 
fore, and on this particular morning it was a little 
before day that we approached it. When about a half 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 89 

mile from the town, we saw, In an upper window of 
a house, a hand waving a white flag at us, with a quick 
motion to go back. We returned the signal, but kept 
on. I was in front, and, as I rode into the village with 
Corporal John Moon, he asked what I thought about 
that waving from the window? I said that I thought 
it a warning of danger, and that we had better keep 
a sharp lookout. There were about twenty of us in 
the picket squad from our camp, and we generally 
patroled the river from Buzzard Roost down to Lees- 
burg. I had ridden nearly to the upper end of the 
town when I saw that the street in front of me was 
barricaded. I rode up to the obstruction, and said: 

" Look there, John." 

Instantly there was a flash and a roar of musketry 
all along the street, from one end to the other. I did 
not hesitate, but dashed straight at the barricade in 
front of me, and spurred my horse upon it. She went 
over like a cat, and not a shot hurt us. Corporal 
Moon also escaped, and we only lost two men. This 
ambush taught us a lesson that we never forgot. We 
set a secret watch after that, and I picked up the 
traitors and we gave them short shrift. After escap- 
ing, I rode up to the house, where the signal of warn- 
ing had been given us as we were going into Lovetts- 
ville, and met a young girl not more than twelve years 
of age. She asked me why we did not go back when 
she told us to. She said that she saw the Yankees 
when they were at work setting the trap for us, and 
that she had been up all night waiting to tell us about 
it. I thanked her very kindly, and reported her con- 
duct to General Evans, and he complimented her very 
highly, and he and his staffs paid her a special compli- 
ment by bringing her to a grand reception in her 
honor at headquarters in Leesburg. 



CHAPTER IX 

Hair-breadth escapes — Am appointed scout to General 
Jackson — My appreciation of General Jackson — The 
Romney Expedition — Jackson's splendid generalship and 
military genius — My personal experiences in Jackson's 
campaigns. 

At our picket post just opposite Point of Rocks, 
one chilly day in early November, I was sitting on mj'^ 
horse watching the signal flag of the Yanks about a 
mile away, as it waved from right to left and up and 
down and sidewise. I was trying to catch their signs, 
when I saw a Yank kneel by the side of a rock and bring 
a rifle to bear on me. The distance was so great that 
I sat still and watched him. I saw the smoke curl 
up and suddenly the ball struck me just above my 
ankle in the fleshy part of the calf of my leg, grazing 
the large bone. My leg was lying across the neck 
of my horse in front of the saddle, and but for this my 
wound would probably have been fatal, as the shot 
would have entered my bowels instead of my leg. The 
ball lodged in the fleshy part of the calf, only bulging 
the skin on the opposite side. It was as fine a shot 
as I had ever seen in my life, and I waved my hat 
at the Yank, as I rode off^ to have my wound at- 
tended to. Dr. Holloway removed the bullet and bound 
up the wound, and in a few days I was all right. 

I met with a hair-breadth escape from the Yankees 
at a point opposite Lovettsville early one morning. I 
had spent the greater part of the night on the Mary- 
land side of the river, and had two Yankee prisoners 
in charge. I was just getting them into my boat to 
cross over, when I saw a woman on our side wave a 
light several times in a circle around her head; two 
other lanterns just below me on the Maryland shore 
answered her. I hurried my prisoners into the boat and 
shoved off' from the bank. As I did so a bullet whistled 
close over my head, and another and another, and I 
saw that I was discovered. My two prisoners became 

90 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 91 

obstreperous, and ordered me to surrender; they both 
rose in the boat and started toward me. I did not 
hesitate a moment, but drew my pistol, dropped them 
both into the river, and, putting all the strength I had 
into my paddle, I struck out for the opposite shore. 
It was too dark for accurate shooting, but the Yankees 
made the water bubble up around my boat, and I could 
see them below me on the river in boats, trying to reach 
the opposite shore ahead of me. However, I beat them 
and landed first, but such a landing place I had not 
anticipated. It was an almost inaccessible bluff of 
smooth rock, but I caught on and lifted myself clear 
of the boat, and began a hard climb up its steep, al- 
most perpendicular sides. Reaching a shelf some three 
feet wide I ran along its sides until I found a place 
I could ascend to a higher point. Up this I went as 
fast as possible, clinging to a projecting rock here 
and there. I climbed up for more than a hundred feet 
before I found a level foothold on another shelf. I ran 
along this shelf, which had an upward tendency, for 
a hundred yards or so, when I again began to climb. 
I reached another shelf that I thought would take me 
to the top, but it did not, and I had to stop to rest, 
as this running and climbing was too much of a strain. 
The Yanks, in the meantime, were not idle, as the zip 
of a bullet here and there plainly told me. I felt that 
if I did not have help from my own men I would meet 
my fate. I remembered that two chambers of one of 
my pistols were empty, and I at once reloaded them, 
and as I pressed the last bullet home I determined 
not to be taken alive. I knew that the overhanging 
rocks prevented them from seeing me from above, and 
that I was protected from the river, as I could not see 
the water from where I sat ; also that no overwhelming 
numbers could charge me along the narrow ledge that 
I had just passed over. 

All the thoughts flashed with rapidity through my 
brain as I sat in silence awaiting developments. There 
was an occasional shot, and now and then a mumble 
of voices above me, and I heard a woman's voice, clear 
and distinct, say : 



92 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

" You can't get down that way." 

The sound came from directly over my head, and ap- 
parently not more than a hundred feet away. I looked 
up, but the hanging rocks hid everything from view. 
Several stones were loosened, and came rolling down 
the bluff into the river below. I heard a Yank say 
to another: 

"Where was he when you saw him last?" 

I could not catch the answer. I kept my eye on the 
track I had come over, and presently I caught a glimpse 
of a bluecoat cautiously creeping along the bluff, 
his gun in one hand, and clinging to the rocks with 
the other. As he came into plain view, not more than 
forty feet away, I sent a bullet crashing into his brain, 
and he dropped into the river more than a hundred feet 
below. In a moment there was a shower of lead spat- 
tering around above me and fragments of rock rolled 
down the mountainside. 

Again and again some foolhardy Yank would try 
to approach over the route that I had come, and he 
would meet the fate of his predecessor. In a little while 
they changed their tactics. Sharpshooters began to 
send their bullets from the opposite side of the river, 
and they would spat the rocks uncomfortably near. 
But I could not see the shooters, and I knew that I 
was invisible. The sun rose and I knew that it would 
not be long before I would hear from my own men, as 
the news would not be long in reaching Leesburg. I 
suppose that an hour or more must have elapsed after 
I fired my last shot, when I heard that same woman 
say: 

" The Rebs are coming, a whole world of them." 

I did not dare to move or expose myself, but sat 
and waited. I heard the bluecoats taking to their 
boats, and the short commands of their officers as they 
passed off from above and around me. Ere long I 
heard a volley fired down the river, and another and 
another, until it sounded like a sharp skirmish. I 
then rose cautiously, and, clinging close to the rock, 
so as to expose as little of my person as possible, I 
took a good look down the river, and could see a perfect 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 93 

fleet of boats pulling rapidly for the Maryland shore, 
and those landing were running for cover. 

It was not long before I heard the voice of Corporal 
Moon say that they did not come any higher up than 
there. I sang out: 

" John, is that you ? " 
And he answered: 
" Hello, are you hurt.? " 

I said no, but I had had a close call. I soon found 
a place to climb up the mountain, and while our men 
of the Washington Artillery were shelling the Yanks 
m Pomt of Rocks I reached the command and went 
back safe to our winter quarters. 

A few days after this adventure I was sent by Lieu- 
tenant Colonel Jennifer with a dispatch to General 
Stonewall Jackson at Winchester, in the valley of Vir- 
ginia. I reached Jackson's headquarters about the 
last day of November, 1861, and from that day until 
the 3d of May, 1863, I was his scout, under orders 
only from him. I was sent on many secret expeditions 
of great import to our common cause, having been 
highly recommended to General Jackson by Lieutenant 
Matthew Fontaine Maury, and our Secretary of War, 
Seddon, both of whom were kinsmen of mine. My life 
in the camp of Jackson was not one of roses, as I was 
a complete stranger and made but few acquaintances. 
Of course I was known by sight to most of the men, 
but no familiarity existed between us. My duties re- 
quired silence, and I practiced it to the letter of my 
commander, and had communion with no one. 

I am satisfied that no greater commander ever hved 
than Stonewall Jackson. No army was ever too large 
for him. Among the English speaking people of this 
earth there never were but five real generals, in the 
full sense and meaning of the word. They were Marl- 
borough, Wellington, Washington, Lee, and Stonewall 
Jackson, and, but for seniority, I think that Jackson 
ought to head the list. I saw him in every phase of a 
general's hfe. In victory and defeat he was the same. 
He had a master mind, one that at a glance could take 
in the whole detail of a subject. His resources were 



94 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

unbounded. He was as gentle as a woman in manner, 
pure as a vestal virgin in thought and act in his every- 
day life, and as stern in duty as a Roman Senator, and 
obedient to law and its commands as a Spartan soldier 
on the picket line. His counterpart has never before 
appeared in the annals of history in any age or 
clime. 

I rode in his rear, that beautiful bright New Year's 
Day, out of Winchester on his disastrous Romney ex- 
pedition, when we were not allowed to take an overcoat 
or blanket on our horses, but had to deposit them in 
our baggage wagons that were to keep up with us 
(said wagons to this distant day have never yet over- 
taken us). 

In that awful campaign I saw the weary men, like 
horses, pulling the heavy guns into position ; saw them 
fall and slip on the ice-sheeted mountainsides, bruise 
and shatter their limbs. With him I have lain against a 
log at night, and, with a blanket of snow for a cover- 
ing and the frozen earth for a mattress, await the 
coming of the day. Without fire or food of any kind, 
save a few grains of raw Indian corn saved from that 
wasted by our horses, to satisfy the awful cravings of 
hunger. I have listened to the loud and deep curses 
of the half-frozen men, as they trod the frosty ground, 
with the piercing north wind chilling their very marrow, 
the thermometer registering ten degrees below zero. 
And after the fierce fight at Kernstown, where he held 
his own against ten times his numerical strength, and 
compelled the Yankees to cease their advance, and 
again at McDowell, he circumvented Milroy and his 
cohorts, and practically destroyed his army. Then he 
swung down the valley of the Shenandoah, and, at the 
head of his corps, rode into Front Royal, and galloped 
across the two burning bridges with but a handful of 
scattering cavalry. On the pike leading from Front 
Royal to Winchester, with but sixty-eight men, he 
compelled the retreating forces to halt until his re- 
serves could come up and capture the major part of 
them. Then, in a rush, he cut off and destroyed the 
wagon trains and ammunition, and, in a word, crushed 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 95 

the corps of Banks and freed the valley of Virginia of 
every Yankee. 

Again, when the armies of Fremont and of Shields 
were doubled and concentrated upon him, and the great 
army of McClellan was about to invest Richmond, he 
sent dispatches to Davis and Seddon by couriers, with 
the request that they send him fifty thousand men and 
he would relieve the siege of Richmond, capture Wash- 
ington, and dictate terms of peace in Philadelphia or 
New York. This seemed like a pipe dream, when he 
had only fifteen thousand men, and in his front two 
army corps of twenty-five thousand each confronted 
him, only a few miles apart and each determined to 
capture and destroy him. And how he paralyzed 
Fremont's twenty-five thousand one day and scattered 
his hosts to the four winds, and then turned the next 
day and annihilated Shields, and, without a pause, 
swept across the State and fell with overwhelming 
force on the rear of McClellan's great army around 
Richmlond, driving him into the sea ! 

Thus he showed the power he had, and made himself 
the idol of all the South. Thus he gave to the world 
a new record of generalship that had no place before 
in the annals of history. And what was more he led 
and was followed by the same soldiers who had cursed 
and condemned him on that fearful expedition to Rom- 
ney, but a few days or weeks, I may say, before. 
There hatred was turned to idolatrous love, and, with 
the confidence he inspired, his men would have stormed 
any works on the face of the earth. Nothing could 
shake their confidence in him. 

I am satisfied at this distant day, and so is every 
man who served with Jackson, that if Davis and Seddon 
had sent him the fifty thousand men he asked for 
at that time in the valley of Virginia, he would have 
fulfilled his promise to them. 

But the past is in the eternal past, and there is no 
recall. When the military student comes to survey 
the genius and generalship of Stonewall Jackson he 
will have to lift his eyes to a towering height, far above 
the plain of ordinary humanity, and it will be a snow- 



96 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

shrouded and cloud-dimmed peak that will greet him. 
Centuries will roll away before his equal will again tread 
the fields of martial glory. If I could only soar to 
that blue vault that arches o'er this sunny southern 
clime of ours, I would dip a fiery pen into the Stardust 
that sparkles along the pathway of the angels, and 
write his name in letters of living light upon the dome 
of heaven, there to shine until earth shall pass away. 
His spirit is immortal, and his example is ours, and 
our children's children through all eternity. I hope 
the gentle reader will pardon me for this tribute to my 
great commander, for I felt it a duty that I, as one of 
his men, owed him and his memory. 

In the stupendous movements of Jackson in his cam- 
paigns I will give some of my individual adventures. 

Just before driving Banks out of the valley, I was 
sent down ahead of the movement to look over the 
situation, and to note the movements of the Yankees. 
I was in Page Valley, near Luray, when I saw a squad 
of bluecoats around Kite's distillery, not far from 
Marshhead Mountain. I led my horse into a small 
grove, and, leaving my pistols and belt on my saddle, 
I climbed up a pine tree to get a clear view of the 
surrounding country, and especially the party around 
the distillery. I was fully sixty feet from the ground 
when three bluecoats rode up and ordered me to de- 
scend. I came down rapidly, as they leveled their 
carbines at me, and as I reached the ground I twisted 
around the tree, and put it between me and them. I 
pulled a small Smith & Wesson pistol from my pocket 
and shot the Yank that had my horse, and put a 
second shot into the brain of the next nearest. As 
the third fired at me, I shot at him just as he whirled. 
I struck him, as we learned afterward, through the 
bowels. 

My horse stood still, as she had been trained, and I 
mounted and caught the other two, and put out up 
the winding road that led to the top of the mountain 
where we had a heavy picket. I was going as fast as 
I could make the horses travel, when I looked back 
and saw about thirty bluecoats coming as fast as they 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 97 

could travel. They were gaining on me rapidly. I 
made one of the turns in the winding pike up the 
mountain, when the bullets of my pursuers began to 
whistle around and kick up the dust uncomfortably 
near. I had to turn my led horses loose and put mine 
at full speed, as I had to pass again in close range, on 
account of the windings of the road up the mountain. 
Some of them had dismounted and were coming straight 
up the mountain to cut me ofF. My little mare seemed 
to realize the danger, and of her own accord increased 
her speed. As we crossed the danger line the bullets 
whistled uncomfortably near. 

As we again came around the screw-shaped incline, I 
slackened my speed, for coming down to meet me was 
a squad of our men, and I knew that I was not going 
to be captured. I dismounted and put my horse out 
of danger, in the small spot outside of the pike and 
next to the mountain. I laid flat on the ground and 
peeped down the ascent that my pursuers were climb- 
ing. The first fellow that came fully in view I tumbled 
down the bluff', and at the same time those who were on 
horseback following were met by a withering fire from 
the boys who were coming to my rescue. This put 
a new phase on the proceedings and the pursued be- 
came the pursuers. We killed several of them before 
they got out of range. 

I spent the night on Marshhead, and the next morn- 
ing there were no bluecoats visible about Kite's dis- 
tillery. Half a dozen men rode with me that far. I 
rode down in the direction of Front Royal, but, seeing 
a well-beaten path of infantry, cavalry, and artillery 
going in the direction of Fhnt Hill, I followed them, 
and was soon in view of their rear guard. I turned 
off at right angles, and rode about a mile down a 
neighborhood road at full speed, and then turned and 
paralleled their Hne of march. I was going at full 
speed so as to get in advance of this brigade or divi- 
sion, and find out whose it was, when I was suddenly 
halted by a squadron of my own regiment. I reported 
the object of my movements and Captain Alexander 
sent Corporal Moon and ten men with me. We ap- 



98 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

proached Flint Hill just as the Yanks were entering 
it. I told Moon to halt and conceal the men, and that 
I would ride down as close as I could and try to ascer- 
tain what troops they were. I rode almost into the 
town, in fact so near that I could distinguish the color 
of the men's hair, for I felt that the nearer I was the 
less notice they would take of me, thinking that I 
was one of their own men. 

I was in quite a deep cut, with a high fence and 
hedgerow on my right and a steep incline and a stone 
fence on my left. I was counting the files as they 
passed, and noting the numbers of the regiments, and 
looking for the corps badge, when I heard a bugle 
sound a short distance behind me. I glanced quickly 
back and saw a whole company of Yankee horsemen 
coming directly toward me from my rear. I did not 
hesitate, but rode up the embankment to my left, stuck 
the spurs into my horse, and made straight for the 
stone fence, which was about four feet high, and I 
cleared it like a bird. 

There were several companies of bluecoats, and they 
were on the north and east side of the little field that 
I was in. They all set out to kill or capture me. 
Several rode up to where I had jumped the fence, 
spurred their horses, and tried to make them jump 
it as mine had, but they failed. In the meantime I 
had turned a little southwest, diagonally across the 
field, and as I reached the south side of it they sent a 
shower of bullets after me. This woke the whole march- 
ing army to my right, and many horsemen and some 
infantry tried to cut me off. My little mare out-dis- 
tanced every pursuer, and across fields and pastures 
I sped like a fox hunter, with possibly two hundred 
soldiers doing their best to overtake me, and a con- 
stant rain of lead flying around me. 

I gradually inclined my course toward where a part 
of my regiment was on duty. Presently I saw about 
a hundred of them hid in a hedgerow within twenty 
feet of me, and I was ordered not to check up. I 
understood the meaning of the move instantly, merely 
leaned forward, and increased my speed. I glanced 



]MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 99 

back and saw that the head of the pursuing cavalry 
had just about passed our ambuscade, when there was 
a sharp, rattling volley poured into them, and the 
road was instantly full of fallen men and horses. I 
turned and met a lieutenant of the 12th New York 
Cavalry and a sergeant. They surrendered at once, 
and I rode back to where the dead and dying, some 
thirty odd, lay. 

I, of course, succeeded in accomplishing my mission, 
and reported by courier to General Jackson all that 
he wished to know. I rode leisurely back up the valley, 
and when but ten miles above Front Royal I stopped 
for the night, inside the advancing lines of our army. 
By midnight we were on the move, and at daylight 
our advance guard struck the enemy and drove him 
out of Front Royal. They retreated in the direction 
of Winchester, setting fire to both the bridges that span 
the Shenandoah at this point. Our advance guard was 
close up to the retreating Yanks, and a squad of us 
dashed across the burning bridges, with Stonewall at 
our head. 

We left the river in a gallop. I saw Stonewall drop 
slightly behind, and a Major Davis, quartermaster of 
Wheat's Battalion, of the Tiger Rifles from New Or- 
leans, went to the head of the column. The dust was 
so thick that I could scarcely see my file leader at 
times. 

In an hour or less we rose a hill, and I could see 
down the pike for half a mile or more. Before us, 
from near the foot of the opposite hill, was a brigade 
of bluecoats, formed in line of battle. A battery of 
six guns overlooked the incline, with a regiment of 
cavalry in the rear. In front of the guns were three 
regiments of infantry, one above the other, on both sides 
of the pike. Below them, in the form of a " V," was 
a skirmish line of about three hundred men. The wings 
of the " V " opened toward us, and the nucleus of the 
line rested in the pike. To the left of us was an apple 
orchard and to our right a beautiful grove of large 
trees, and a residence of no mean proportions. The 
left wing of their skirmish line was directly in front 



100 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

of the residence. A stone carriage house jutted out 
on a slight elevation over the pike on my right. I took 
this scene all in at a glance. I was about the twentieth 
man from the front, and we were in a column by eights, 
which covered the whole width of the road, and I could 
not see across it for the dust. 

As we came in sight of the Yankees, there was a 
slacking up of our speed, and the order was quickly 
given, " Forward the cavalry," and we dashed on. I 
never expected to see the sun of that day go down. 
I knew that a withering fire would greet us at the 
foot of that hill, and I said a mental prayer and com- 
mended my soul to the God who gave it. Just beyond 
the carriage house that jutted over the road was a 
spring branch, and when I was within fifty yards of 
it there came a clear, ringing voice from the front, 
" Charge ! " I drove the spurs deep into my horse's 
flank, and she quivered and closed on my file leacier 
at once. Then there was a crash of musketry, and the 
road was full of dead men and horses, rolling over each 
other. I saw Stonewall under the protection of the 
stone carriage house, waving his cap, and saying in 
clear tones : " Forward, the cavalry ! " 

My horse's hoofs touched the skull of a fallen com- 
rade, and I felt her ease up for a second, and then 
gather herself together and dash on. I had my saber 
drawn, but as I rose the hill I saw a solid wall of bayo- 
nets in front, three lines deep. I held my saber in one 
hand and drew my pistol, and leaning forward con- 
centrated my fire at one spot. From being the twentieth 
man, I was now the first, and when my pistol was 
emptied I threw it into the line of bayonets. As my 
horse reached the line she reared and plunged, and 
struck out with her feet. For a moment I had all I 
could do to keep my seat. I struck right and left 
with all the power I possessed at the seething mass of 
bluecoats that now filled the pike, like men at an 
auction, in no order, but densely crowded together and 
in each other's way. I could feel the jar of my sword 
as it struck a bayonet or man, and I kept it rising and 
descending with all the power that I could concentrate. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 101 

I was completely surrounded as far as I could see 
with Yankees crowding over each other, in the cut in 
which we were densely packed. I could see them hur- 
rying up the steep sides of the road, jerking each 
other down and trampling on the fallen, in their frantic 
efforts to get out of the road into the open wheat-fields 
on either side. I was like one in a trance. The ex- 
citement was far beyond any that I had formerly ex- 
perienced, and I was striking with a forced power that 
was beyond my control. The pike gradually emptied, 
and I could hear the shouts of men, the rapid crackling 
of small arms, and the ping of pistol balls all around 
me. I was very near the top of the hill on a level 
spot. 

When I recovered my senses from the intense ex- 
citement, I was in a tremor, head to foot, and my little 
mare was holding her head down and panting rapidly, 
as from a long race. My arm was hanging down 
and felt as if a heavy weight was attached to it. I 
raised it and found that my saber was fastened as if 
by compression to my hand; the guard of the hilt 
was forced down against my fingers, and so bent that 
I could not remove it. I sat quietly for a moment or 
two and heard a voice near me say : 

"Fontaine, are you hurt.?" 

I turned half round, and saw Moon approaching. 
He dismounted and came up to me, and I got off of 
my horse and staggered and fell. The jar of falhng 
seemed to revive me, and I rose at once. He asked 
why I did not let go my saber, and on examination he 
took a bayonet from a musket and pried the guard 
of the saber from my hand, and I felt relieved. He 
said that he and I were the only ones left that were 
in the original column that made the charge. 

After resting a few minutes, listening to the irregular 
popping of the pistols in various directions of the 
pursuing cavalry, I remounted, and we turned off to 
the right of the pike and rode across an open wheat 
field. We picked up several prisoners who had hidden 
in the growing grain. We had some eight or ten, 
when Moon proposed that he would take them back to 



102 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

the provost guard. He did so and I rode up near a 
hedgerow that ran at right angles to the pike, and 
suddenly came upon a very tall Yankee, apparently 
dead, lying in a sink. I halted and looked at him and 
saw that he was breathing very slowly. Cautiously, 
I rode just over him and said: 

"Are you hurt.?" 

He did not move, and I said : 

" Poor fellow, he is badly hurt, I had better put him 
out of his misery." 

I cocked my pistol, and he roused at once and said 
he was not hurt, but would surrender. I saw he was 
a member of the 8th Virginia, U. S. V., as his cap was 
so marked. I told him to get up, and he arose at once. 
We were about a hundred yards from the hedgerow, 
and I noticed that he often looked that way. I asked 
him if any of his friends were hidden there. He said 
that he did not know. I turned that way, and when 
only a few feet from it I saw the red fez cap of a 
Zouave under it. I leaned over some distance, peeping 
under as far as I could, and ordered the Zouave to 
come out and give himself up, or I would send a bullet 
after him. 

As I was intently watching to see him crawl out, the 
tall Yank picked up a musket that had been dropped 
by some of his fleeing friends, and tried to bayonet 
and shoot me at the same time. He made a failure, 
as his bayonet struck the pommel of the saddle, and 
the ball went wide of the mark. I turned with my 
coat on fire from the explosion of the powder and sent 
a bullet into his skull, and as he dropped I continued 
to give him two or three more, until his head was a 
jelly. My red fez fellow dropped on the ground and 
begged piteously for his life. I looked into his fair, 
young, terrified face and I pitied him, and asked him 
if he was a married man. He said he was not, but 
that he had a mother. I turned with him toward the 
pike, and when about a hundred yards from a squad 
of our men I heard the crack of a rifle behind me. 
I turned and saw the smoke rising from a spot in the 
wheat field. I asked one of the boys to take charge 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 103 

of the prisoner, and I rode directly to the place from 
which I saw the smoke rise. I saw two bluecoats close 
together in a tall clump of wheat not more than fifteen 
feet away. I rode directly over them and saw that 
they were shamming. I sent a ball into the brain of 
one, and as the other started to rise I cut his spinal 
cord in two. I rode all around over that field up to the 
hedgerow, and picked up three fellows who had not been 
hurt and carried them in. The last two fellows that 
I shot belonged to the 8th Virginia Renegade Regi- 
ment, U. S. v., as did the one who tried treacherously 
to assassinate me after he had surrendered. If these 
last two had not been cowards, they could have escaped 
by keeping quiet until dark. 

That night Moon and I were together under the 
same blanket on the inside of the field near the pike. 
We discussed the events of the day. I found that m}'^ 
little mare had a flesh wound from a bayonet or bullet 
in her thigh, but it was bleeding but little, and scarcely 
discernible unless particular attention was called to it. 
My arm was very sore and stiff, and I had a powder 
blister as large as the palm of my hand where the 
renegade Virginian tried to shoot me, otherwise all 
was well with me. 

The next morning we were roused up by the bugle 
call of a camp not far off. As we got into our saddles 
I was quite stiff, and did not feel as if I had had a night's 
rest. We rode down the pike in the direction of Win- 
chester, and as we passed the first house General Jack- 
son rode into the pike ahead of us. He remarked: 

" You boys were in the charge on the pike yester- 
day.?" 

We answered, " Yes, sir." 

He told us that we need not perform any duties of 
any kind until we received orders from him, and that 
Corporal Moon need not answer to roll call, but to 
scout with me and keep in touch with the army, and that 
the best thing for us to do was to go somewhere and 
get breakfast. 



CHAPTER X 

Presented with saber by General Ewell — Turner Ashby — 
General Jackson's version of the " Gallop of Death " — 
Jackson's retreat up the Valley of Virginia — Death of 
Ashby — In the Shenandoah Valley — In the hospital at 
Charlottesville. 

It was not long before we came to a nice looking 
residence, about a mile to the right of the pike, and 
about five miles from the battlefield of the day be- 
fore. Here were two or three ladies, an old gentle- 
man, and a deformed boy. We asked if we could get 
a glass of milk and some bread, and we were told to 
come in. They were just about going in to breakfast 
when we rode up, and, as we got down and hitched 
our horses, they asked us if we were in the fight they 
had heard the day before. We were asked if we had 
ever seen JefF Davis or General Beauregard, and if 
we had ever heard of Stonewall Jackson. We answered 
yes to every question, and told them that we belonged 
to Jackson's army, and if they would go to Win- 
chester within the next week or so they could see him. 
We had a nice country breakfast, such as we had not 
tasted for many a long day. 

We turned in the direction of Winchester, but kept 
a mile or so away from the pike. As we reached a point 
near an old water mill we passed an old farmer, with his 
two horses geared to a plow. He told us the 
" Rebs " had been driven back, but were near by. We 
heard the crack of a ten-pound Parrott gun not very 
far away. We started at once for the scene of ac- 
tion, and as we rose a hill overlooking the surround- 
ing country, we were greeted by the rattle of musketry 
and the sharp crack of a Parrott gun and heard the 
explosion of a shell not more than a quarter of a mile 
away. We could see a large body of two or more 
companies of our cavalry retreating toward Front 
Royal. We thought that the Yanks were advancing 
to meet Jackson, so we kept ourselves and horses con- 

104 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 105 

cealed. I dismounted and got into a position where 
I could see down the pike beyond where the firing came 
from, and I was surprised to see a company of Yankee 
infantry, on the double quick, making in the direction 
of Winchester, followed by a squad of their own cav- 
alry in a trot. I could see about a dozen bluecoats 
near the south bank of the creek, seemingly on picket 
duty. I came back and told Moon of the situation, 
and that it was not an advance but a retreat of the 
Yanks. 

We rode down the creek to within two hundred yards 
of where the pike crossed it, and when we entered the 
pike we turned in the direction of Winchester. As 
we turned a sharp elbow in the pike, we were greeted 
with the crack of the Parrott gun, and a shell just 
missed my head and exploded in our rear. I whirled 
instantly, and going about a hundred yards dismounted 
and told Moon to hold my horse, and I would take 
one more view of the situation. I climbed the hill that 
overlooked the scene, and could see nine cavalrymen 
only. One of them was pulling a charge of ammuni- 
tion out of his saddle pocket, and handing it to one of 
the men at the gun. I saw at once the condition of 
affairs. The gun was one that had been abandoned 
the evening before in the retreat, from our charge. It 
having become unlimbered, they did not stop to relimber 
it, as they were in too much of a hurry. I crept back 
and told Moon this, and that I believed that we could 
capture the gun if we made a bold dash. He agreed. 
I was to charge around the bend down the pike, and as 
they fired at me, I was to yell: 

" Charge them, boys ! We have got them ! " 

He was to follow, saying: 

" Come on, boys ! We've got them ! " 

We carried out the program, and sure enough they 
broke as soon as the gun was fired. 

We pursued, and killed two and captured one. We 
brought our prisoner back to the gun, and I stood 
guard while Moon rode back to where the old farmer 
was plowing with his team. We compelled him to 
come with a doubletree and chain and hitch to the 



106 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

trailpin. We started back down the pike in the direc- 
tion of our advancing columns. I made our prisoner 
straddle the gun, and in a sharp trot we passed along 
the pike. In passing the first house there were several 
ladies on the gallery, and as we came directly opposite 
they rushed to the gate and greeted us with shouts and 
waving handkerchiefs. The yard was full of beautiful 
red peonies. I stopped and asked for one, and several 
were handed me, and one of the ladies gave me a minia- 
ture Confederate flag. I thanked her and galloped 
on and overtook Moon and our gun. I stuck one of 
the peonies in the touchhole of the gun, and the flag 
in the cap of our prisoner, who was having a rough 
ride on his iron horse. 

We soon came in sight of our advance guard, drawn 
up in line of battle, with guns unlimbered, ready to 
pour a volley into us. I halted the gun, and raising 
a white flag galloped across the bridge to where I saw 
a group of officers, and saluting, I informed them that 
we had captured the cannon and were bringing it in. 
I waved to Moon and on he came with the gun. 

The whole division gave us a cheer, and when they 
saw the Yank riding on the gun there was a perfect 
storm of cheers. General Ewell rode up, and I reported 
all the circumstances of the capture, and that evening 
at parade we were read out in general orders, and in 
the presence of the division each of us was presented 
with a handsome saber. Now, forty-four years after, 
that saber hangs on the sitting-room wall of my cot- 
tage in the peaceful valley of the great Mississippi 
River at Lyon ; a sacred memento of those stirring 
times. 

Moon and I reached the outskirts of Winchester, and 
in the direction of Kernstown we could hear the roar 
of Jackson's guns. He had struck the advance of 
Banks' retreating army, and we could see a long dense 
cloud of smoke, seemingly miles long. We could see 
a crowd of cavalry and disordered masses of infantry 
scattered all along the roads leading in and out of 
Winchester. We rode as near as possible to observe 
their movements. It was not more than an hour before 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 107 

we saw the approach of our pursuing cavalry, under 
that great leader, Turner Ashby. No bolder, braver, 
knightlier leader than he ever strode across the plains 
of death, in any clime or century of the world's history. 
Moon and I entered the city close up to the rear of 
the retreating Yanks, ahead of any of our cavalry. 
Our pistols were soon popping, and dropping a strag- 
gler here and there, as I was opposed to taking foreign 
hireling stragglers prisoners, or showing them the 
honors and courtesies of war. 

A dense smoke was rising, in the direction of the 
railroad depot, and I dashed down in that direction. 
As I came in sight, I saw several bluecoats dart 
around the far corner of the burning building. I 
galloped diagonally across the opening, and Moon took 
another way of approach. I was close to the building 
and the sparks were beginning to rise, when I hap- 
pened to glance down, and saw the ground covered 
with cartridges, shells, and open kegs of powder, scat- 
tered over fully an acre of ground. I had entered the 
grounds in considerable of a hurry, but I can assure 
you that my hurried entrance could not compare with 
the speed of my exit. 

As I whirled and tore down a side street, and put 
a square or two of buildings between me and the ex- 
pected explosion at the depot, I saw a bluecoat sev- 
eral squares away making good speed, but trying to 
enter any door that seemed to offer him a refuge. I 
saw several ladies out on the upper porticoes of build- 
ings as I passed, and just as I was getting close enough 
to halt my fleeing Yank, I saw a lady in a small balcony 
looking at me and the bluecoat. She seemed to be 
very much excited at the race. The Yankee was mak- 
ing directly for her door, and I had my pistol ready 
to stop him at any moment, when, as he was passing 
her, she pointed a small derringer downward, turned 
her head and fired. She did not even see the Yank when 
she pulled the trigger, for I was watching her every 
motion, but her shot went triie, and the Yank tumbled 
to the pavement, as dead as if struck with a sledge 
hammer. 



108 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

I reined up my horse and congratulated her on her 
deadly marksmanship. A pallor spread over her face 
as she exclaimed: 

" Oh, I did not kill him, did I? " 

I replied, " You certainly did, madam ; and I must say 
you made a fine shot, in fact as good as any soldier 
could have made." 

She then begged me to say that she had not killed 
him, but that I did. I told her that I did not care 
to rob her of the honor, and rode off. 

Our army entered in time to save the depot, and 
strange to say not a spark fell on the scattered powder, 
and the greater part of it was saved. 

In and around Winchester I made many warm friends, 
and for several days life passed like a dream. The 
citizens were as warmhearted, true, and generous as any- 
where in all our sunny southland. 

At headquarters, from General Jackson's own lips, 
I heard the particulars of that " gallop of death " on 
the pike from Front Royal toward Winchester, and 
the losses we sustained. We only had sixty-eight men 
in the charge, and at the first fire thirty-eight went 
down to rise no more. Out of the whole number. Moon 
and I were the only survivors who ever again answered 
to roll call. The General said that when the little squad 
passed him, as he stood in the shelter of the stone car- 
riage house, he never had such feelings in his life, and 
that not for his life would he experience them again. 
He thought his whole cavalry force was closed up and 
together with him, as they were all at the bridges when 
he galloped across to join the advance. But, after we 
crossed, the column had halted and put the fires out, 
and then followed. This caused a delay of some five 
or ten minutes, and in the meantime we had dashed 
into the heart of the dense line of bluecoats, and 
been wiped from off the earth. But we had broken 
their lines and routed them, as our reinforcements 
reached us. He said that he saw the hand of Provi- 
dence in it all, and that it was for the best, and that 
if the whole of our men had been together our loss 
would have been several times greater. He said that 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 109 

he saw me stoop and enter their lines like a meteor, 
and saw my horse rear and plunge in the smoke and 
dust, and could see the flash of my saber. I can never 
forget his expression, while relating these incidents, 
while the dim candle light sputtered in the soft May 
night not far from Charlestown, on the pike leading 
to Harper's Ferry, in 1862, now more than forty-four 
years ago. 

Slowly and reluctantly Jackson retreated up the val- 
ley of Virginia, before the concentrating armies of 
Banks, Fremont, and Shields, growling and showing 
his teeth at every step, and striking stinging, paralyz- 
ing blows whenever he was crowded by his pursuers. 
At Harrodsburg, on the evening of the 6th of June, 
we lost our great cavalryman, Turner Ashby. And 
that bright Sunday morning, the 8th of June, we let 
Fremont catch up with us, and have his cohorts scat- 
tered to the breezes, and a large portion of his men 
left to fertilize the farm land around Cross Keys. 
Monday morning. Shields felt the grip of Jackson 
around his throat, and he was choked into insensibility, 
and shaken by him as a hound would shake a summer 
coon. 

Before the echo of Jackson's guns had ceased to re- 
verberate around the plains of Port Republic, he had 
planted his bayonets in the rear of McClellan's army, 
on the opposite side of the State, and compelled that 
doughty warrior to " change his base," and take to 
his gunboats and the sea to escape his grasp. 

When Jackson went to Richmond to help in the 
seven days' battles around the city, he left the cav- 
alry in the Shenandoah Valley, with strict orders to 
keep in daily contact with the Yankee army, and to 
harass them at every point, as if he was near by with 
his corps. This was to keep them from sending out 
scouts to ascertain his movements. 

I remained in the valley to watch every movement, 
and, should there be any change, I was to at once give 
warning. I had been given very strict and precise 
orders, verbally, by General Jackson, before he left 
for Richmond, and they were constantly ringing in 



110 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

my ears. I was anxious to go with him to engage in 
the great struggle around our chief city, but he said 
I would be of more use in the valley. 

At the fire of the first gun at Cross Keys I was on 
a slight eminence, watching the advance of Fremont. 
I took in the situation, and galloped up to the little 
church, where Jackson was attending the services. As 
I dismounted and was about to enter the door, a shell 
came hissing over the church, and burst a short way 
beyond. The congregation was not long in dispersing, 
as they were principally soldiers. I made a hasty re- 
port to the general, and he told me to watch their move- 
ments and report their progress. 

I left at once for the front and made a short detour 
to the right of where I last saw the columns advancing. 
While riding rapidly through a forest of scattering 
trees, I found that a brigade of our men were march- 
ing at right angles and to the westward of the ap- 
proaching Yanks. I whirled and came up to their 
left wing, and seeing the colonel I hailed him and told 
him the enemy was on his left flank, and would soon 
have him cut off from the rest of our army. He in- 
stantly reformed his line to face in the direction indi- 
cated by me. I learned from him that he was Colonel 
Posey, and that his regiment was the 16th Mississippi. 
Just as his regiment swung into line and formed, a 
voice behind us asked: 

"What is the meaning of this move.'*" 

I turned and saw a small man with a naked sword 
in his hand, no belt or scabbard, and no insignia of 
rank. Not even a coat did he wear, but was in his 
shirt sleeves. I started to disregard him altogether, 
when Coloney Posey answered: 

" This gentleman says that the enemy is on our left 
flank and will soon be between us and our army, General 
Trimble." 

" And who the hell is this gentleman.'' " 

I replied that I was a courier from General Jackson. 

" Well, sir, show us where they are and take the 
lead at once, for we are anxious to meet them." 

As I turned my horse, I said : 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 111 

" Follow me and I'll show them to you." 

Thus that Sunday morning, the 8th day of June, 
1862, at Cross Keys, I had the honor of leading into 
its first baptism of fire and blood, the 16th Mississippi 
Regiment, commanded by Colonel Carnot Posey. 

At the first volley from the enemy, I lost my horse ; 
several balls penetrated her vitals, but I was only 
scratched. I took a musket from a wounded man, and 
joined in the melee, as an infantryman of the 16th 
Mississippi, and went through the battle. 

After the battle of the next day, at Port Republic, 
Moon and I went down the valley in the charge after 
the fleeing and disordered remnants of the troops of 
Shields. 

Our men took but few prisoners, for General But- 
ler's orders about the ladies of New Orleans, and Gen- 
eral Beauregard's accompanying orders had been read 
to us at dress parade the evening before, and our 
soldiers were burning to avenge the insults offered by 
"Beast Butler." 

Our cavalry shot the hirelings as they would mad 
dogs, as ninety per cent, of them could not speak or 
understand English. 

About ten miles below the battlefield, as Moon and 
I were returning from the chase, and were following a 
dim road near the foothills, we saw a smoke up a small 
cove or valley. We halted, and I got off my horse 
to reconnoiter. I saw a company of Yanks who had 
halted, and seemed to be preparing to go into camp. 
I saw them putting their campkettles on the fire, and 
could see several of our own men sitting off to one 
side, with bluecoat guards watching over them. I 
saw the exact conditions surrounding them, and that 
we could get very near them on both sides. A thicket 
of mountain laurel came down, within a few yards of 
them, just opposite where we then were. I told Moon 
to creep up to where I had been, and take a good look 
at the ground and see how they were camped, and 
then to come back, and we would see if we could not 
recapture our men. After he returned I proposed 
that he ride round, dismount, and crawl into the laurel 



112 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

thicket, just as close as possible to them. I would wait 
until I saw his signal, then I would mount my horse, 
and ride boldly down into their midst, and demand 
their surrender, declaring that I had them surrounded, 
and that I would annihilate the last one of them, if 
they hesitated even for a minute. As I raised my arm 
he was to demand in stern tones : 

" Captain, shall I fire into them.'* " 

Coming so near and from their rear, I knew this 
would have the desired effect. When I saw Moon in 
his place, I mounted and rode right down within a 
few yards of them, and with my pistol in hand com- 
manded them to surrender, as I had them surrounded. 
As I had expected, every one sprang for his musket in 
the stacks. 

Just then. Moon, from in their rear, said, " Captain, 
shall we fire into them.'' " 

They came to a sudden halt, and I commanded each 
man to file by and pile his pistol or any side arms he 
had onto the stacked muskets ; this they quickly did, 
and I asked the prisoners to come up and let me see 
who they were, and at the same time, turning in the 
direction of Moon, I said in a clear voice : 

" Lieutenant, let your men keep these fellows cov- 
ered, and shoot any man that disobeys any order I 
may give." 

Moon instantly gave the order, " Ready ! " and a 
dense silence ensued. 

One of the prisoners was a lieutenant of the 1st Mary- 
land, and had a slight wound in his head. I said: 

" Lieutenant, take charge of these muskets and arm 
every one of your fellow prisoners. March these Yan- 
kees out to the valley pike, and if they become the least 
disobedient do not fail to shoot to kill. I will be near 
with my company to enforce any of your orders." 

I formed the Yanks in line and gave them marching 
orders, and as they moved off I beckoned to Moon, and 
we bent and destroyed the guns left behind. We rode 
on each side of the road that they were on, until we 
reached the open fields, then we came up from opposite 
directions, and I rode up and told the lieutenant that 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 113 

I would keep my men in the woods, but near enough to 
aid him in case of need. I said this in a clear, distinct 
voice so that each captive could hear it, and I again 
told him to shoot any man who did not respond at 
once to any of his orders. 

I left Moon on the flank next to the woods, and I 
galloped on in the direction of our army. Within a 
mile I overtook about twenty of our boys and told them 
the fix we were in. They stopped, and as the prisoners 
came abreast, we rode up and formed on each side of 
them, and I reheved the Heutenant, and let him ride 
a led horse one of the boys had captured. 

There were thirty-six of the Yankees, and they never 
knew the ruse I had played on them until they heard 
my report to the provost marshal in charge. Our 
prisoners were a part of the provost guard of Shields' 
army, and had marched away to the rear before they 
knew the result of the battle. I received a certificate 
from our provost, which I sent to our Secretary of 
War, and I received a very complimentary letter from 
him in regard to the strategy Moon and I used in the 
capture of this company, and I gave the letter to Moon 
and told him to send it to his mother to be kept as an 
heirloom in the family. 

From the day of the battle of Port Republic until 
the 20th of June, I was constantly in the saddle, keep- 
ing up with the cavalry on the south side of the Shen- 
andoah, and riding near the pickets of the Yanks, pick- 
ing off^ one here and there as I had an opportunity, 
and harassing in every way their retreat. 

A mile or so east of Strasburg Colonel Jennifer 
called for four hundred volunteers to go into the town 
if possible, and reconnoiter the position of the enemy. 
I spurred to the front at once and took my place at 
the head of the column, and in a few seconds our com- 
plement of men was full. When within a mile of the 
town, we saw a battery of two guns unlimber in our 
front, and without a moment's hesitation Colonel Jen- 
nifer ordered us to charge them. We started forward 
at a quick trot. I was riding a large, heavy captured 
horse, and was at the head of the column, and the shells 



114 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

began to whistle and hum uncomfortably near, but 
passing directly over my head. The nearer we got 
the nearer they came, and as we descended a small 
depression they began to explode in our ranks. We 
were in a column of eights, and in close order, and 
I said that I thought we had better scatter, so they 
would not have such a good target to shoot at, but 
no attention was paid to my suggestion. When we 
rose the top of a slight elevation, not more than three 
hundred yards from the battery, the order came : 

" Draw sabers ! Charge ! " 

We obeyed to the letter. I stuck my spurs deep 
into my horse's flank, and fixing my eyes on the guns 
I rode straight for them. When within about three 
hundred feet of the battery a shell struck my horse 
square in the head, and burst at his shoulders. I was 
thrown far off into the pike, my right thigh frac- 
tured, my right collarbone broken, and my whole body 
paralyzed. Two of the men, whose horses had been 
killed, lifted me from the pike, and laid me on the bank. 
Just as they did so, another shell exploded, and blew 
one of them to pieces and stunned the other, and gave 
me another wound that nearly crushed my right side 
in. I lay in a stupor for some time, and saw our men 
retreat by me, and the Yanks pursuing. Then the 
Yanks came back on a run, and our men followed. The 
Yankee infantry came up right over me, and for a 
while a hard skirmish took place all about me. I was 
shot again in the back of the neck, and a ball shattered 
the pelvic bone. A dead Yank lay within three or four 
feet of me, with the cap of his skull torn away. 

The Yankees fell back and our men did not come 
up to where I was lying. I had spit up a great deal of 
blood and seemed to be swelling up inside, but the 
ball in the back of my neck and the one that shattered 
my pelvic bone seemed to relieve the pressure on my 
lungs, and I breathed freer. I tried to move, but was 
unable, and I spoke several times, but no one answered. 
I watched the sun go down and prayed for water. Some 
time in the night I felt that if I could get my head on an 
elevation I would find some relief. My eyes fell on the 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 115 

body of the dead Yankee, and I began at once to make 
an effort to reach him, but the progress was exceedingly 
painful and slow, as my lower limbs were useless, and 
I was only able to use my left hand and arm to propel 
the whole body, and as I moved my belt would press 
heavily on my breathing apparatus, and I would have 
to stop. I tried to take the belt off, but this required 
two hands, and I could only use one. I suffered untold 
agonies from thirst, and here nature came to my aid 
by sending a cooling rain, and I caught the wet tail 
of my coat and began to suck it, but it was soaked in 
my blood and it almost nauseated me. I held my left 
elbow against my lips, let the water accumulate in the 
hollow thus made, and got some relief. 

I continued the struggle to reach the dead Yankee 
and rest my head on him, and some time during the 
night I succeeded. I must say that the relief I felt 
compensated for all my struggles. Toward daylight 
the heat of that June night became great, and I sup- 
pose that I grew feverish. The Yankee now began to 
swell, which caused his limbs to draw up and clasp me 
too caressingly for comfort ; the swelling of his body 
had a tendency to bend my neck and force my chin down 
onto my breast, thus interfering with my breathing. I 
tried to move away from him, but I was too stiff and 
weak to do so. Toward the coming of the day the green 
flies began to come in swarms all over me, and I was kept 
busy keeping them out of my mouth and nose. By 
sun-up I was pretty well exhausted. 

My dead pillow grew larger and I saw that if I did 
not get relief I would be smothered. My knife was in 
my right pocket and I made desperate efforts to get 
it out, and at last succeeded. I knew that if I could 
open a cavity in my dead pillow the gas would escape, 
and I would thus get relief. I tried to stick the blade 
into his cavity, a good distance from my nose, but 
I could not do so, and at last I forced it in within a 
few inches of my nostrils, and the fumes that escaped 
almost stifled me. The swarms of flies increased, and 
the unclouded June sun, on that longest day in the 
year, blazed with fearful intensity upon my hatless 



IIG MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

and unsheltered head, until it seemed to burn my very 
brain ; and the scent of my pillow did not tend to better 
my case. 

About ten o'clock in the morning I heard the voices 
of men, and some of our pickets passed and gave me 
water, and aided me in keeping the flies off, moving 
me to a shade, while they sent for the ambulance and a 
surgeon. I heard the rattle of the ambulance and felt 
the surgeon's touch, and the arms of strong men lift 
me on to a swinging stretcher. The will power that 
had sustained me through those long hours seemed to 
vanish, and a strong feeling of faith in the surgeon's 
help took its place. I sank into insensibility and was 
free from pain. 

I was carried to Port Republic, to the residence of 
Mrs. General Lewis, and placed in a beautiful room in 
an upper story, with a window that permitted a lovely 
view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. A snow-white can- 
opy and a soft curtain of netting, walls of purest white, 
and a gentle, almost imperceptible breeze, like the flut- 
ter of a bird's wing, and a sweet perfume of violets 
greeted me as I opened my eyes. 

For several moments I lay still and tried to gather 
my wandering thoughts ; I could not move, but out 
of one corner of my eye I caught the dim blue haze 
of a mountain top, and out of the other side I could see 
the forehead and outlines of an angel face ; could feel 
the fanning of her wings on my brow, and the sweet 
perfume of her breath gave life to my soul. I remem- 
bered the terrible night on the pike. The scenes were 
flitting vividly through my clouded brain. I lay in a 
trance, half dreaming, while these visions would come 
and go. I could feel a gentle breeze fan my brow, and 
I thought that my soul had left the body and winged 
its flight to the gates of the bright upper world, and 
that I had entered Paradise. I broke the silence by 
asking my angel companion if I was in Heaven.? She 
said that I must not speak, but lay quiet, and not make 
the least exertion. I tried to turn my head so as to 
get a view of her, but it seemed as if every part of my 
body was dead. My angel got up and left me. I saw 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 117 

that I was bandaged from head to foot, and only my 
left arm free. 

While I lay in this half-dreamy condition, there came 
into the room one of the sweetest, most motherly faced 
women I ever saw. Her hair was as soft and white as 
snow, and her face seemed to shine with a radiance not 
of this earth, and I was more certain that I was in 
Heaven. I asked her also if this was not Heaven? 

" No," she replied, " you are at the house of Mrs. 
General Lewis. I am Mrs. Lewis, and you must lie 
perfectly still, and not try to move a muscle, as you 
have been terribly wounded. It is as much as we can 
do to nurse you, and you must help us all you can." 

Her voice was as pure and angelic as she seemed, and 
it quieted me as the voice of a mother does an infant 
in her arms. She gave me something to eat, feeding 
me with a spoon with her own hands, while a negro girl 
stood by holding a waiter. 

When I again was roused I was in an ambulance, 
going down a mountainside, and by my side sat a sur- 
geon and a nurse. At the next gleam of consciousness 
I was in a large building, with whitewashed walls, my 
body in an iron frame, swung to a pulley fastened to 
the ceiling, and my negro boy George sitting by my 
side fanning me. Thus almost unconscious I had been 
transported by ambulance from near Strasburg, in the 
valley of Virginia, across the Blue Ridge Mountains to 
the hospital at Charlottesville in Albemarle County. 

For twenty-one days I laid in this iron frame, swung 
to the ceiling and closely compressed in bandages. I 
could only move my left arm. Once every twelve hours 
the bandages were changed, and I made George soak 
both lint and bandages in strong tar and camphor 
water, before I would allow them to be replaced. And 
it was due to this mode of treatment, and my healthy 
physical condition and the watchful care and skillful 
attentions of Drs. Cabell and Davis that I recovered. 
I emphasize Dr. Davis' name, for it is to him that I 
owe my life. 

The seven days' fight at Richmond was a thing of 
the past many days before I heard of it ; and in the 



118 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

hospitals at Charlottesville were the major portion of 
the sick and the wounded from Jackson's Valley Cam- 
paign. More than three thousand were cared for here 
at this time. 

Nearly every preacher and chaplain in the corps were 
here, and daily and hourly they sang and exhorted, and 
kept up a constant excitement among the sick and 
wounded. My window at the head of the cot, from 
which I was raised and lowered, permitted a good view 
of the road to the burial grounds, and hourly the carts 
would pass, with gun boxes in which the dead bodies 
were encased. I noticed that after each long continued 
shouting at these revivals, as they were called, from 
twenty to twenty-five extra carts passed, loaded with 
the remains of a dead soldier. So I requested our 
surgeon to forbid the practice, as the intense excite- 
ment of these daily meetings had a tendency to un- 
balance the already fever-weakened soldiers, and cause 
their death. I especially requested that they be for- 
bidden to come into our ward, and he granted the 
request. 

Our ward had about sixty men in it, all desperately, 
and supposedly mortally, wounded. Just to the right 
of the door, as you entered, was a Tennessee captain, 
with most of one side of the right frontal bone of his 
skull removed, but he was able to leave his cot and 
walk about. Up each side of the ward were pale, 
emaciated men, with different kinds of fearful, ugly 
wounds. Small curtains were dropped by the surgeons 
to hide the patients when they were dressing their 
wounds. 

My bunk or cot was at the extreme end in the south- 
west corner, next to the street leading up to the Uni- 
versity buildings, and the corner rested on the ground. 
Persons passing could look right into my window, and 
down onto me. A few minutes after I received the 
promise that there would be no campmeeting proceed- 
ings held in our ward, I asked George if he knew where 
the pistol that I had captured from, the lieutenant of 
the 12th New York Regiment was. He said it was in 
my knapsack, and he got it out and handed it to me. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 119 

It was of peculiar make, and shot twelve times. It had 
a double cylinder and two hammers, and the charges 
had been rendered waterproof with a coating of sperm. 
As I took it I cocked and revolved the cylinder, and 
found it in first-class order. I laid it under the sheet 
by my side, and was resting from the exertion, when 
a preacher, with whom I was familiar, stepped in the 
front door. He stopped at the cot of the Tennessee 
captain, sat down on the side of it, and commenced 
conversing in a low mumbling tone. In a few moments 
I saw the captain's face flush, and the tears gather in 
his eyes, and his frame shake, and he turned and hid 
his face. The preacher rose, dropped the curtain and 
left him, and came on to the next in line, the same scene 
being enacted in each case. I could not hear his words, 
but the nearer he got to me the madder I became at 
the farce perpetrated upon these poor, wounded, help- 
less men, by a mistaken fanatic. Before he was within 
three cots of me I caught the formula of his proceed- 
ings and prepared my own plan. 

He reached my cot, and in a very cool, sanctimonious 
manner came around the foot and up near my head. 
He was drawing his coat tails to one side, preparing 
to take his seat, when I sang out: 

" Don't you sit down on my cot, d you. Don't 

you see that I am in a frame and don't want to be 
jarred.'' George, get up and give that fool that stool." 

His face flushed, and he said: 

" Oh, you are very wicked." 

I told him I knew that, as we were all bom in wick- 
edness. That God made us so and that I could not 
help it." 

" Oh," he says, " you have not found Jesus." 

" No," I said, " I did not know that he was lost, and 
have not been hunting for him." 

" Oh, you are so wicked." 

" I know that," I replied. " I was born so, and it is 
not my fault, I cannot help it, and there is no use of 
your telling me the same thing over again." 

" Oh, my dear young friend, you should make your 
peace with God." 



120 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

I replied, " You are a d crazy fool. I never 

was at war with him, never fired a gun at him in my 
life, and I never expect to as long as I can get a Yankee 
to shoot at." 

" Oh, my dear friend, you should find Jesus." 

" I am not able to get up and hunt for him now. 
Have you any idea where he got lost ; in what neigh- 
borhood? I will send George to help you hunt him." 

" Oh, my friend, you are very low, and in an awful 
condition to talk so." 

" Yes, my cot and this end of the ward are not very 
high, but you are mistaken when you say that I am in 
a terrible condition, for I am able to eat everything 
they bring me, and the doctors all say that they never 
saw anyone in a better condition. Either you or they 
have lied to me, and from the way I feel I think that 
it is you who have lied." 

His face flushed, and he said: 

" My dear sir, you are not prepared to die ; you 
are not fit to face your God." 

I replied : " You don't know what you are talk- 
ing about when you say that I am not prepared to 
die. I certainly make a poor soldier, and so do all these 
men in here, from your standpoint. They certainly 
have been very near death from their wounds, and a 
man not prepared to die makes a mighty poor soldier. 
These are Jackson's men and they say that he has the 
best soldiers in the Virginia army, so I think that you 
have made another misstatement, and if you keep on 
these boys will soon think that all you have said is 
false." 

" Oh, I am so sorry that you are not prepared to 
meet your great Creator." 

I asked him if he felt that he was ready to meet his. 

He lifted his eyes and hands in very dramatic style, 
and said : 

" O Lord, I hope so." 

I brought the pistol quickly in front of his eyes, 
and said : 

" Now's a good time to die." 

At the crack of the gun, no startled animal ever 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 121 

made a quicker bound, or better time than did the 
parson from that building, and he shattered a panel 
of the light door as he made his exit. I sent the bullet 
up through the roof so no damage was done, and such 
a roar of laughter as followed that preacher out of 
the ward was never heard in the confines of a hospital 
before. Every curtain he had lowered was lifted and 
thrown high, and bright smiling faces were on all 
sides, and " Hurrah for Fontaine ! " came from every 
quarter. 

We had no more attempts to hold a campmeeting in 
our ward, and it was said that I was crazy and ought 
to be put in a strait jacket. After I had lain for 
three weeks in my iron frame without moving, I was 
slowly relieved of the binding pressure by Dr. Davis, 
and the week after the removal of my body from its 
frame, I was carried out to the hospitable home of 
Dr. Carr, at Bentovar. There, under the kind minis- 
trations of Mrs. Carr and her two daughters, I was 
soon myself again. 



CHAPTER XI 

Back to camp — At Cedar Mountain — Receive my discharge 
from the army — Remain in camp at request of General 
Jackson — Exhibit my marksmanship to General Lee at 
his request — I report to General J. E. B. Stuart — The 
" Second Manassas " battle. 

Early in August I got a hospital leave, and while 
yet on my crutches I went back to camp to resume 
my duties at headquarters. Many of those I had known 
in the valley campaign were asleep on the fields of 
glory around Richmond, and there were many vacancies 
in the ranks. But the morale of the army was un- 
surpassed. 

I took eleven sharpshooters and crossed the Rapidan 
River, about four miles above where the railroad crosses 
it between Gordonsville and Manassas, and circled in 
toward the rear of Pope's army, while it was encamped 
near Cedar Mountain. 

As I was looking over the valley from the top of 
a hill, in the direction of the enemy, I saw a squad of 
thirty odd Yanks in the front yard of the residence of 
a Mrs. Taliaferro, about a mile from my point of ob- 
servation. I saw that I could approach very near them 
without being seen, and concluded to reconnoiter their 
position and ascertain their mission in that region. 

We rode close up and hid our horses behind some 
straw stacks, nearly in front of the house, and then 
crept up to the hedgerow and peeped over. Two men 
were on duty with the horses, and the balance were ran- 
sacking the interior. I saw a young lady with a hand- 
kerchief to her eyes pacing back and forth in an upper 
room, seemingly very much excited. I could hear the 
hoarse oaths of these Yankee brutes, who were merely 
carrying out the orders of the braggart Pope. We 
could hear the voice of an elderly lady remonstrating 
with these fiends, and it made my blood boil. 

While we were lying behind the hedgerow, the raiders 

122 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 123 

came out on the front gallery, each with a bundle in 
his hands. I heard one say: 

" We will eat out here where we can look around." 

Following the soldiers, carrying a folding table, 
were several negro servants of the household, and they 
seemed to enjoy the discomfiture of " Old Miss." One 
bright mulatto was all smiles, and she announced to 
the officer in command that she was going to the camp 
with him. 

The table was set and chairs placed for the crowd, 
and laughing and swearing, using the most horrible 
language, they took their seats at the bountifully loaded 
table. 

Little did those beings dream that the angel of death 
had his wings spread over that feast. 

I had my men count from one to twelve, as we lay 
concealed, so that no two would shoot at the same 
man. The Yank, as he sat at the festal board, corre- 
sponded with his number, and at the first fire we would 
rush through the hedge with our pistols and make a 
clean sweep of them ; not one of them must escape alive. 
I issued these orders in a whisper, and they were obeyed 
to the letter. As our rifles cracked, some had two in 
range and made double killings, and before those left 
from our first fire knew or realized what had happened 
they felt the shock of burning bullets in their vitals. 
I got the two who were guarding the horses, as I left 
the cover of the hedge. 

The lieutenant in command escaped the first and 
second fires, and, jumping from the gallery, broke 
for the rear of the house, but it was of no use. When 
he was brought back he was confronted by Mrs. Talia- 
ferro and her granddaughter, and his doom was sealed. 
I ordered the men to put a halter around his neck and 
to hang him to the arch of the front gate, as a warn- 
ing to any of Pope's future trespassers. 

The bundles that these villains had made up consisted 
of all the silverware, jewels, and heirlooms of the fam- 
ily, and many old fashioned garments of costly fabrics 
of a bygone age. The lieutenant had stripped Mrs. 
Taliaferro's wedding ring from her finger, and with 



124 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

fearful oaths compelled her to open secret drawers and 
hiding places, under the fear of death with which he 
constantly threatened her. She told me with tears in 
her eyes, while I was making the negroes remove the 
dead bodies from about the table and scour the fresh 
blood from the gallery floor, that when they were in 
the house, she asked the lieutenant if he was not afraid 
that God would strike him dead for the fearful language 
he and his men were using. 

He replied with a sneer, " God, who is he .'' He's 
played out long ago." 

As I returned her ring, she threw her arms around 
my neck, saying, " Heaven will bless you for this day's 
work, you and your brave men." 

I advised her to get into her carriage, and take all 
her valuables, and with her granddaughter to go at 
once to some friend inside our lines and there remain 
until a day of safety came. These raids were liable 
to occur at any time, day or night, and she might not 
have a defender near at hand as I had been, as it was 
a mere accident that I happened to be in reach. She 
took my advice, and the next day she went to a friend's 
place near Charlottesville. 

The check Jackson gave Pope at Cedar Mountain 
opened his eyes, as he there saw the front of his enemy, 
instead of his back, and, if General Lee had acquiesced 
to Jackson's plan before Pope turned tail for Cul- 
peper, Pope and his army would never have reached 
Washington City again. But I pass that by, for by- 
gones are bygones. 

I was given a final discharge from the army by the 
surgeons of the hospital at Charlottesville, while I was 
with the army near Clark's Mountain, opposite Pope's 
camp. This discharge recited that I would never again 
be fit for any kind of service. It said that my wounds 
were such that it was impossible for me ever to regain 
my strength, and it then recited the kind and nature 
of eleven of them. In great distress I showed this to 
General Jackson, and he said : " Remain in camp and 
let me see what you can do." 

I did so, and, although encumbered with my 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 125 

crutches, and at times not able to mount my horse 
without help, I continued to do every duty he asked. 
My eyes were as keen and every faculty as alert as 
it ever had been, and my aim and marksmanship as 
deadly and unimpaired. I rode with Stuart around 
Pope's anny, and through it at Catlett's Station, 
shared all the hardships of that maneuver, and again 
reported to Jackson a full description of all our ad- 
ventures, and asked him if I was not fit to take my 
place again with any of them? He said to wait a 
while. 

When we were in Pope's rear at Waterloo Bridge 
in Fauquier County, in the latter part of August, just 
before the second battle of Manassas, I crossed the 
river, about three-quarters of a mile above the bridge, 
one morning about half an hour before day, with the 
intention of getting in the rear of the forces oppos- 
ing us, and ascertaining how many, and to what com- 
mands they belonged. 

As I was riding slowly through a dense pine thicket, 
I heard voices just ahead. I halted, and crept for- 
ward to reconnoiter. I found a small opening of 
not more than half an acre in extent, with a single- 
roomed cabin in the center. This I saw at once was 
inhabited, apparently, by a negro family, and as I 
listened I could hear the peculiar intonation of a Yan- 
kee voice. Soon two of them came out, and with them 
a Confederate soldier with a rope around his wrists, 
his hands bound behind him, and one of the Yanks 
holding him. The Yank who had hold of the rope had 
his company and regimental numbers on the front of 
his cap. Company D, 111th Pennsylvania. The other 
belonged to Purnell's Maryland Legion, and the Con- 
federate captive was a member of the 1st Maryland 
Regiment, C. S. A. They were a part of a provost 
guard of the U. S. A., and members of the corps of 
the Yankee army in our front. They stopped at the 
cabin all night, as it was deserted, and were just 
starting with their prisoner for their encampment, 
when I came upon them. 

I was almost directly in their line of march, and 



126 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

I crept as close as possible to the path they were m. 
As they came directly against me I arose, with a pis- 
tol in each hand leveled at each, and demanded their 
surrender. They dropped their muskets at once, and 
did not hesitate. I made them back off, and I took 
charge of their guns, and compelled them to untie the 
hands of the prisoner. I handed him a gun, and told 
him to shoot the first one of them that made the least 
noise, or that made any attempt to escape. I marched 
them to where I had left my horse, mounted, put 
my prisoners in front, let my Confederate boy mount 
up behind me, and rode back to the river. One Yank 
could not swim, and I made him catch my horse by 
the tail and hold on, and I plunged my horse in and was 
soon on the opposite shore. 

I carried my prisoners up to General Jackson, and 
from them he obtained the information we wished. 

Soon afterward, as we attempted to advance toward 
the bridge across the Rapidan, we were met by a 
sharp fire from the skirmish line of the enemy, who 
were stationed at Warrenton, and Fauquier Springs, 
and their reinforcements began to pour in from every 
way on the opposite side of the river. Our men held 
their place in the cellar of a large frame house near 
Waterloo Bridge, and the • musket fire soon became 
general all along our lines. We were in a valley, and 
the Yankees occupied the hills overlooking the valley, 
which were crescent shaped. They had all the ad- 
vantage of position, and could concentrate their fire 
upon us. 

Jackson's headquarters were on an eminence, nearly 
opposite the left wing of the Yankee line of battle, and 
just about on the same plane of elevation as they 
were. We could look down on the whole valley in 
which our men were, and watch the progress of the 
fight. 

There was an old burnt brick mansion at our point 
of view, with several fallen columns, and on one of 
these Jackson was seated, with his stafF near him. A 
Federal battery of ten guns unlimbered just in front 
of us, and began to shell the valley. I was leaning 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 127 

against a part of a column base, about a foot higher 
than my head, and I had a fine view of every gun in 
this battery, from five to six hundred yards away, I 
asked the General for permission to open fire on them 
with my rifle, and he granted my request. I rested 
the rifle on the shoulders of my crutches, as they leaned 
against the brick column, adjusted my sights for the 
distance, and taking the gunners in rotation I opened 
fire, and every shot went true to its mark. After I 
had fired twenty shots General R. E. Lee rode up with 
a portion of his staff, pulling out his watch as he 
dismounted, and shook hands with General Jackson. 
As Lee raised his glasses to scan the situation. General 
Jackson remarked that they had just been watching 
the deadly fire of my rifle, and the wonderful marks- 
manship I displayed. General Lee asked me to con- 
tinue my exhibition, and I did so, directing his atten- 
tion to No. 1, Gun No. 1, calling out at each shot 
a victim, and for forty shots not failing to drop the 
man selected. At the fortieth shot witnessed by Gen- 
eral Lee, and the sixtieth I had fired from my position, 
my ammunition gave out, and I so announced. The 
General glanced at his watch again, and said : 

" You say you have fired sixty shots from your Whit- 
worth rifle, without a miss ^ " 

I replied, " Yes, sir." 

" Why, you have not been an hour at it." Looking 
straight into my eyes, he asked, " Young man, don't 
your conscience hurt you? " 

" For what. General.? " I asked. 

He replied, " For shooting so many of those people." 

I asked him if he had ever shot a rattlesnake? He 
replied that he had. I asked him if his conscience hurt 
him for It? 

"No," he said. Then I said: 

" General, I shoot these people for the same reason 
that you do a rattlesnake, and I have no conscience in 
the matter. They are here to kill me and my com- 
panions, and to destroy and desolate our land, and it is 
a duty I owe my country, and what I enlisted In our army 
for, I thank my Creator that I am able to perform the 



128 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

duty imposed upon me so well as to meet the approval 
of my commander and my comrades, and all those 
who are near and dear to me." 

There was a silence at the end of my reply, and Gen- 
eral Lee drew his dispatch book from his pocket, and 
wrote for a minute or two, tore the leaf out, and, 
without folding, handed it to me. 

As I took it from his hand, I asked: 

"Who must I hand it to, General? " 

With a gentle smile on his face, he said : " Show 
it to posterity." 

I turned away and read it with a full heart. It 
was a certificate from him testifying to the fact that 
he had witnessed my deadly marksmanship at Waterloo 
Bridge, on that August day in 1862, where sixt}^ men 
fell before my single rifle in less than sixty minutes 
of time. I thanked him for his great kindness, and 
handed the dispatch to General Jackson, who re- 
marked to General Lee that in every engagement in 
which he had watched me shoot, he was satisfied that 
I had destroyed more of the enemy single-handed than 
had any company in his command. He said that he 
had time and again witnessed my shooting and that 
he had never seen me make a miss, and that he was 
satisfied that I was the best shot in his corps. This, 
of course, was a record I was proud to have my great 
commander relate to General Lee, and a legacy to my 
little ones in the future. 

Shortly after this I was sent with a dispatch to 
General J. E. B. Stuart, and upon handing it to him 
he said that I would remain with him. The cavalry 
crossed over the river, and we moved toward Manassas 
Junction, and in the rear of Pope's army. The main 
body of the cavalry moved toward Thoroughfare Gap, 
and I, with two men, went on a scout as far as Bristow 
Station. 

I struck the Gordonsville & Manassas, or what is 
known as the Orange Railroad, where the Warrenton 
Junction enters it. I reached Bristow Station one dark 
night, and rode right into a large body of Yanks. 
No pickets halted us, not even a camp guard, and 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 129 

we were in among the sleeping men and stacked mus- 
kets before we were aware of it. We did not disturb 
them. I rode pretty fast, after passing through them, 
in a northwest direction, and at about daylight we 
were halted by our own men. I immediately reported 
to Stuart the forces I had discovered, and their 
position. 

We marched at once on to Manassas, and found 
Jackson's infantry awaiting our arrival, only about 
a mile from the Junction. We took the place with 
only a slight battle, and about four hundred of us 
galloped on to Centerville, where we were met by a 
brigade of bluecoats and driven back. We decoyed 
this brigade into the arms of A. P. Hill's corps, and 
they surrendered. We then went down to the railroad 
crossing,; on Bull Run, and took possession of the 
bridge and its guard. We lay in ambush here, await- 
ing events that might transpire. 

Jackson was in communication with the Federal 
Quartermaster-General at Washington, and was or- 
dering vast quantities of ammunition and supplies, in 
the name of Pope, for his own use and that of General 
Lee. Soon we could hear the rumble and shrieks of 
the engines, and heavily loaded trains, as they sped 
toward us from the city of Washington. We let 
several trains pass our ambush, and when we could 
hear no more approaching from Washington we re- 
moved several rails from the bridge and set them so 
as to throw an engine against the opposite bank of 
Bull Run. We noticed as the last train passed that 
an extra engine was pushing it in the rear, where the 
caboose generally is, and that this engine was full of 
Yankee officers of various rank, all scanning the coun- 
try with their field glasses as they passed. Some ten 
minutes had elapsed after we had finished tearing up 
and fixing the bridge, when we heard a train coming 
back from the front at a fearful speed. A glance 
up the track revealed the engine containing the officers 
who had just passed. A volley did not halt them, 
and they dashed upon the bridge at a speed of a mile 
a minute. Leaping into the chasm, the engine struck 



130 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

the opposite bluff, about thirty or forty feet below 
the level of the bridge, with a deafening crash and 
explosion that shook the surrounding country like an 
earthquake. The engine and its occupants were 
crushed into a bloody mass, the steam obscuring every- 
thing, and the waters of Bull Run hissing and foam- 
ing as the coal fires and heated iron dropped into it. 
It was a sight I can never forget, and I can shut my 
eyes and catch the vision to this distant day. 

We returned to Manassas, and such a sight as 
greeted my eyes I never could have imagined. Jack- 
son's men had marched from the Rappahannock, a five 
days' journey, without an ounce of cooked food, as 
fires were not allowed. They had subsisted the entire 
way on green apples and raw roasting ears, culled 
from the fields on the line of march. Here at Ma- 
nassas they were in the midst of plenty, more food 
in sight than they had ever before seen. Great piles 
of meat, smoked and splendidly cured — yes, a hundred 
tons or more in a pile, and sutler's stores of every 
kind of canned goods and delicacies, from rum to 
sparkling champagne and Rhine wine. Cakes and 
candies of all sorts, and a whole army's supply of the 
best boots and shoes and underclothing, far superior 
to anything in " Dixie." Bolt after bolt of calico and 
blue cloth were stretched between the rails of the rail- 
road, an impromptu table, on which was spread a feast 
fit for the gods' banquet. The ragged and tattered 
men of Jackson's corps at this table were enjoying the 
bounties so plentifully supplied by the Yankees from 
the rich store houses of the North. It was a scene 
never to be forgotten. Such toasts as were drank to 
wives, sweethearts, and mothers, by these men, would 
fill a volume. And what is more it was a picnic on a 
field of death, for before the feast was over the legions 
of Pope began to assemble on the distant plains, and 
the " Second Manassas," that awful carnival of death, 
began. 

That evening, with Stuart's chief scout, Farley, I 
left Manassas and scouted as far north along the 
pike as Fairfax Court House. We captured a lieuten- 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 131 

ant and a wagonmaster, and turned them over to the 
provost guard of General Fitzhugh Lee. We could 
hear the boom of Jackson's guns, as Pope's army at- 
tacked him, and we recrossed Bull Run, and rode 
straight to Jackson's headquarters. We reported that 
there were no troops in sight, coming from the direc- 
tion of Washington, and that we had captured the 
only two Yanks we had seen between Centerville and 
Fairfax, 

I took my place not far from headquarters, on A. 
P. Hill's right flank, and soon entered into the con- 
flict that was raging along the old railroad cut. Here 
I witnessed some of the most desperate fighting of the 
whole war, and here we encountered real American 
soldiers, not foreign hirelings. 

I had a good position, at short range, overlooking 
the field, with plenty of ammunition for my Whitworth 
rifle, and for about three hours I did my best. I paid 
little attention to the privates, and had the satisfac- 
tion of seeing every officer fall upon whom I " drew 
a bead." 

There was one ofl5cer, I well remember, mounted on 
a dark-roan horse, just in the skirt of woods beyond 
the railroad cut from me. He was as calm and cool 
as any man I ever saw, and I hesitated about shooting 
him, but I soon saw that his presence and example were 
an inspiration to his men wherever he turned. As re- 
inforcements came up, they would cheer, and he would 
show them where to go, I saw it was best to dismount 
and send him to his rest in the " Great Beyond." As 
I fired he rolled from his horse, and the horse wheeled 
and galloped down the line toward our left, but only 
a short distance from where his master lay he stopped, 
and started to return, when he, too, fell, and, with 
scarce a struggle, he, too, was dead. 

A few minutes after this officer fell, the Blue line 
began to waver, and I only got in three more shots 
before they were in the woods, and out of my sight, 
but they continued to fire as they retreated. Our 
men crossed the railroad bed, and I saw many of them 
filling their cartridge boxes from those left behind 



132 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

by the retreating enemy, on the bodies of the dead, 
as well as on the wounded. 

Our troops were soon closing in a compact mass 
against the retreating Yankees in the woods. I came 
down from my hiding place, and again reached Jack- 
son's headquarters. Our men kept up the chase for 
possibly a mile, and as night came on they fell back 
to where the fight began, leaving the dead and wounded 
in their front. 

I sank to sleep soon after the fight was over, and 
early the next morning I was aroused by the roar of 
the cannon, the bursting of the shells, and the rattle of 
the musketry. At the beginning the battle promised 
to be a fiercer one than that of the day before. Far 
away, in the direction of Bull Run, I could see long 
lines of bluecoats, and could hear in the distance the 
whistle of engines and the rattle of musketry. Long 
lines of glittering bayonets gleamed in the rising sun, 
and it was a magnificent array, such as I had never 
had the opportunity of seeing before. 

The crash of the picket firing kept drawing nearer, 
as the sun rose higher. 

I was sent with a dispatch to General A. P. Hill, 
and as the Yankee columns advanced I looked toward 
Thoroughfare Gap, and saw the men of Longstreet's 
corps coming at a quickstep. As they neared the hill 
on which I sat, I saw them halt and deposit their 
blankets and knapsacks in long rows in regimental 
order, and place guards over them, then they filed 
past me to the front in line of battle. Soon the real 
din of battle began on my right, at the foot of Grove- 
ton Heights, in the same spot the Yankees first oc- 
cupied in the first great battle of the 21st of July, 
of the year before. We occupied the exact grounds 
the Yankees then held. 

I was sent with a dispatch to a long line of batteries 
on our right wing, mostly North Carolinians, and 
had to ride nearly the whole length of our line. As 
I rose to the crest of the hill where the guns were 
belching forth their thunders, the sight was the grand- 
est that I had ever witnessed. For four miles I could 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 133 

see the bluecoats, seemingly covering the whole earth, 
in long unbroken lines, their bayonets glittering in 
the morning sun like sheen on the wind-stirred waters 
on some placid lake, before the breaking of a storm. 
Soon the landscape was darkened by clouds of sul- 
phurous smoke that rose from every point. The very 
earth trembled, and the green leaves of the trees fell 
in showers, as if from an autumnal blast, when the 
frost king had breathed upon them. The hum of the 
solid shot, the scream of the shells and hiss of the deadly 
minies, and the shriek and crash of the screaming bombs, 
made a din almost unbearable. 

As I gained the crest of the hill, just in the rear of 
a ten-gun battery, and in advance of the regiment 
supporting it, a shell entered my horse just in front 
of my left knee; the wind of the shot sucked my knee 
inward toward the track of it, and we were hurled 
some ten feet or more, nearly into the line of men 
lying below us. I was shaken and jarred, but not 
hurt to amount to anything. I arose at once, delivered 
my dispatch to this battery, and, mounting an artil- 
lery horse, I galloped just under the crest of the hill 
to the next battery. As I again rose the hill another 
solid shot played the same trick, and I again rolled 
to the earth, my horse dead, and I stunned and as bloody 
as if terribly wounded. But I was not hurt, only 
bloody from contact with my horse. I secured another 
horse, finished my errand, and reported back in safety. 

The din of the battle far surpassed any that I had 
ever before experienced, save that at the seige of Se- 
vastopol, in the MalakofF. I saw the exhausted gun- 
ners of Longstreet's corps as soon as they were relieved 
drop down almost under their guns, and in a moment 
be sound asleep ; yes, sleep as sound as babes in their 
mothers' laps, amid this awful din, and with the blood 
trickling from their ears and noses. 

I dismounted, fastened my horse near our head- 
quarters, and crawled to the top of the hill to watch 
the progress of the battle. As I was looking, I saw 
Hood's Texans march by just under me, going into 
the fight at a double quick, and their coming was 



134 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

greeted by tremendous bursts of cheers on every side. 
I fell into ranks with them. We marched over the 
crest of the hill and down a declivity, and took position 
in the edge of a small skirt of timber, with an open 
wheat field in our front. A gentle slope led to the top 
of the hill before us, and we were fully concealed by 
a fence overgrown with vines and bushes. We pulled 
down the rail fence and built a temporary, concealed 
breastwork of the rails. Behind this we lay as still 
as death. 

Soon down the slope came a magnificent line of 
Zouaves, in gay uniforms that lent a bright hue of 
variegated color to the green of the wheat field. These 
were the flower of the Yankee army. I never saw a 
prettier line of men, or a more perfect formation on a 
dress parade, than they presented as they approached 
us. A whispered count of men came down our line 
from our right wing; I was number 305, and the man 
to my left was 306, and then, when the count was 
over, we were ordered to count the Zouaves, and each 
man to fire at his number in their ranks. We waited 
until we could see them wink their eyes, each man 
selected his target, and a deadly aim was taken. At 
the signal every rifle in our front rank cracked, and 
I don't suppose that so deadly a fire was ever before 
so coolly and deliberately delivered on any battlefield. 
The Zouaves went down in a perfect line, as wheat 
before the scythe. In an instant those left were mowed 
down by the rear rank, before their comrades had 
hardly fallen, as they were hardly forty yards away. 

As the smoke died away, the Zouaves were a thing 
of the past. Only a handful were left, and a drummer 
boy stepped to the front and demanded the surrender 
of the remnant. Without the fire of a single gun, they 
laid down their arms, and were marched to the rear. 

As soon as I found that we had annihilated the 
enemy in our front, I went back to headquarters, and 
watched the progress of the battle. George, my negro 
boy, was at the wagon train with an extra horse, and 
finding where we were, he came up and I was soon in 
my saddle again, ready for duty. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 135 

I mounted my little roan filly and rode tg where 
our cavalry was held in reserve. About the time I 
reached them, the 2d Virginia, my old regiment, was 
ordered to the front, and we moved off. On reach- 
ing an eminence, we could see the whole Yankee army 
in disorderly retreat, and our artillery limbering to 
the front, and pursuing them like cavalry in close 
order, pouring grape and canister into their disor- 
dered ranks. 

We were ordered forward at a trot, and as we crossed 
Bull Run, near the stone bridge, and rose the bank 
on the opposite side, we were met by the 4th New 
Jersey, the 4th Michigan, and the 12th New York in 
succession ; and here we had a terrible hand to hand 
saber fight. It took all my knowledge of saber and 
broadsword exercise and practice that I had ever been 
taught to keep my head on my shoulders. I only got 
in three fair licks during the melee, and if one of them 
had missed my horse would have received the full force 
of the blow. I saw Colonel T. T. Mumford assailed 
by four Yanks, and fought my way to his side and 
got in two of my blows, thus giving him a chance. 

The dust was fearful and the heat intense ; we were 
surrounded by overwhelming numbers, and almost ex- 
hausted, when I heard the bugles of the 12th Virginia, 
coming to our assistance. I glanced back, and saw 
the men of the 12th, with their double-barreled shot 
guns at a level, coming at a full charge into our midst, 
and I was afraid that, in the excitement, they would 
not distinguish friend from foe. But they did, and 
when they were in our midst they sent a volley into 
the bluecoated legions, and eighty men of the Yankee 
host rolled from their saddles to rise no more. This 
gave us a chance to draw our pistols, sheath our 
sabers, and draw a breath of relief from the long 
strain, and the Yanks went down before our fire, like 
autumn leaves before a wintry blast. My saber guard 
was driven down upon my fingers and clamped, so 
that a comrade had to aid me in prying it off. 

I joined in the pursuit, and before reaching the 
woods east of Centerville, we were scattered over a 



136 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

goodly scope of country, picking up a great many 
straggling bluecoats : I was closing on a fine look- 
ing Yank, riding a magnificent dapple-gray horse. 
When within about twenty paces I ordered him to sur- 
render. He paid no attention to my demand, but spurred 
his horse and did not look back. I sent a pistol ball into 
his back, and saw the dust fly from his jacket, at the 
impact of the bullet. He did not turn, and I sent 
another ball into him, and still he paid no attention to 
me. I fired a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth shot at 
him, and saw each take effect. At the sixth shot he 
fell back on his horse, and as his head struck the 
crupper his carbine, which was grasped tightly in his 
hands, exploded, and the ball grazed the top of my 
skull and knocked me senseless from my horse. 

How long I lay on the ground I have no idea. When 
I came to, some of the men of my old company had 
my horse near me, and were removing my dead Yank 
from his mount. He was so firmly fastened to his 
saddle that it was impossible for him to get off, until 
the straps that bound him were released. He had on 
a steel jacket that came more than halfway round 
him, and covered the whole front of his body, and the 
balls I had fired at him were all lodged against the 
back of this breastplate. After falling backward with 
his spine cut in two, his saddle had turned, and his 
face was very much disfigured from the bruises he re- 
ceived from his horse's feet, while being dragged. 

The shot in the top of my head gave me a fearful 
headache. I took a drink of water from my canteen, 
and got the boys to wash the blood out of my hair, 
and examine the wound. They said it was only a scalp 
wound, and had done no harm. They cut some of 
the hair from around it, and bound it up with a hand- 
kerchief. I got on my horse, and, leaving Centerville 
to my right, a mile or so beyond, far out to the left, 
I overtook Cozzens, General Lee's chief scout. To- 
gether we rode in the direction, but to the left of 
Fairfax Court House. The whole country for miles was 
covered with scared, fleeing Yankees, not one carrying 
a gun, pistol, or baggage of any kind. I never saw 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 137 

such a complete disorganization or rout of an army 
or body of men before. Cozzens and I could have taken 
one thousand men without a struggle, as they were 
completely demoralized and without arms. We only 
shot a few hirelings, who could not speak a word of 
English, and were in small groups of three or four and 
some distance from their friends. 

We were three or four miles northwest of Fairfax 
Court House, and just outside of a stream of fugitives. 
Even here the ground was covered with the debris 
of fleeing bluecoats. Guns, blankets, overcoats, and 
knapsacks were strewn everywhere. We kept close 
enough to the stream of retreat to see the columns 
not yet in disorder, and could see their flags and 
bayonets. Seeing two men on an eminence to our 
left, we thought that they were Farley, Stuart's scout, 
and some comrade. We decided to join them, but 
as we got nearer we saw that they were Yankee officers. 
We rode up slowly, and when within a few yards we 
drew our pistols and demanded a surrender, which 
they at once obeyed with alacrity. One was a lieu- 
tenant of the 2d Dragoons, and the other a captain 
in the 4th New Jersey. They were riding splendid 
horses. Cozzens took their arms, while I held them 
covered with mine. They were very much surprised 
to see us, as they thought we were some of their own 
command, or they would have given us a fight or a 
good chase. We were sorry that they were Americans, 
as it necessitated our return sooner than we antici- 
pated, for we did not kill real American soldiers in 
cold blood, as we did the hirelings of foreign countries. 
Had they been foreigners, we would not have taken 
them prisoners, only shot them as we rode up. 

We turned them back and met the advance of Fitz- 
hugh Lee's men. I saw Cozzens ride up to the New 
Jersey man and demand something from him, and the 
fellow put his hand in his breast, and drew out a beau- 
tiful revolver, and handed it to him. After we had left 
the prisoners in the hands of the provost guard, and 
had turned back on our scouting expedition, Coz- 
zens said that while disarming them, he thought he saw 



138 i\IY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

the gleam of a pistol in the New Jersey's man's breast 
pocket, but he was not certain, and he determined to 
keep an eye on him ; so when we turned him over to the 
provost he demanded it, with the above result. 

We rode that day almost in sight of Alexandria, 
and the nearer we got the greater the stampede cf 
the retreating Yanks, and the more disorder was ap- 
parent. We stopped and fed our horses at a farm 
house about a mile west of the line of retreat, and 
got an elegant meal. 

As night closed in, a few reinforcements met the 
retreating army, and they began trying to halt and 
form something like order in their ranks. Squad after 
squad would halt, and as our men were not making 
a very vigorous forward move, they would listen to 
the efforts of the Yankee officers, in all kinds of tongues, 
trying to bring their men to their senses. They seemed 
to have a holy horror of the " rebel legions " that noth- 
ing could overcome, but they made preparations as 
best they could to stay the advance of our army. 

When it was very dark, I dismounted. I hitched 
my horse in a small thicket of dense pines near the 
pike, and Cozzens left me. I crawled down a slope to 
the edge of the bluff over the pike, and found it full 
of Yankee infantry, with regiment after regiment in 
columns of fours. It began to rain, and every now 
and then in the distance, in the direction of Center- 
ville, I could hear the rattle of musketry, drawing 
very near, and getting more distinct and more fre- 
quent. Now and then the shells would explode in sight 
and a minie ball hiss over my head. Suddenly there 
was a heavy crash of musketry close by, and dense 
masses of infantry on the retreat scurried by, and 
the bullets began flying in every direction. At the 
same time the rain poured in torrents, and the roar 
of the guns, the flashes of lightning, and peals of thun- 
der added a terror to the scene. As the lightning 
flashed I would glance up the pike and not a bluecoat 
was visible, but I could hear the rattle of their can- 
teens and the tramp of their feet in the brush on 
the opposite side of the road. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 139 

As I entered the pike, an officer in a raincoat rode 
right up to me and said : 

" What regiment do you belong to, and why are 
you not with your company? " 

As soon as he opened his mouth, I knew he was a 
Yank, and as a vivid flash of Hghtning blazed out I 
ordered him to surrender. He wheeled his horse, lay 
almost flat upon him, and started back into the thicket 
on the opposite side of the pike. I fired at close 
range, not more than ten feet, and almost lifted him 
from his saddle with the force of the bullet. He rolled 
off into the middle of the pike, and his horse darted 
into the pines on the opposite side. 

I ran at once to where he had fallen, and as I reached 
him a shower of bullets rattled around me from up 
the pike. I halted and started back to my horse, but 
no more shots were fired, and I returned to the body 
and took off^ his waterproof coat. As I turned him 
over I saw he had but one arm, the other had been 
cut off above the elbow. I took his watch, overcoat, 
knife and pocketbook, and the papers he had in his 
possession. He had a small goatee and mustache, and 
the epaulets of a general. I left him where he was 
lying, climbed the bank, and waited developments. The 
next day his body was removed from the pike, and 
recognized by General Fitzhugh Lee as that of General 
Phil Kearny, of the Federal army. He lost an arm 
in the Mexican War. I turned over his watch, knife 
and purse to General Fitzhugh Lee, and they were 
sent through the Federal lines with the body the next 
day. I kept the raincoat and wore it through the 
Maryland campaign. 

In the examination of the body I found my bullet 
had entered his left side, just under the belt, near 
the hip, ranged upward and come out near the collar 
bone, on the right shoulder, having passed through 
almost the entire length of his body. His death was in- 
stantaneous. He was a noble looking man, with his 
gray hair, mustache, and goatee, and one arm, and 
even in death he had a military, gentlemanly bearing. 



CHAPTER XII 

At Frederick City — With Jackson at Harper's Ferry — Re- 
Sharpsburg — With Jackson at Fredericksburg— Ad- 
ceive letter of dismissal from my sweetheart — Battle of 
vance of Hooker's Army — Bravery of dying Confederate 
soldiers. 

The rain was pouring in torrents when I remounted 
my horse, and I turned away from the pike and rode 
for a half mile or more at right angles to it. Then 
I halted a while, put on the raincoat, readjusted my 
saddle, and put on the general's spurs, and set for- 
ward on a line parallel with that the retreating army 
was following. I rode at a walk, almost feeling my 
way in the dark, and taking advantage of the flashes 
of lightning. The rain at times was blinding and I 
would have to stoop to hide my face from the gusts. 

After following the angle of the pike for a mile 
or two, I turned again toward and entered it at an 
angle. Our men were marching almost side by side 
with the Yankees, and I passed a squadron of Fitz- 
hugh Lee's cavalry just before I rode into the pike. 
They were standing still. Just about half a mile 
beyond them, and just where the road from Dranes- 
ville enters the Chantilly pike, I rode right into the midst 
of a company of the 2d Dragoons of the Yankee army 
before I found out who they were. I quickened my 
pace and was riding past them when an officer spurred 
out in front of me, and said: 

" Halt! Where are you going? " 

For my reply I put my pistol almost against his 
side and fired, and then drove the spurs into my horse's 
flank and dashed right past the company. There was 
a rattling fire of pistols, but not a bullet came near 
me. The cut in the pike at this place was not deep, 
and in a few seconds I was out of it and safe in the 
brush on the west side. I dismounted, and, hiding in 
a pine thicket, was soon asleep. At daybreak I was 

140 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 141 

again in the saddle, and riding in the direction of 
Leesburg. 

Our fight at Ox Hill gave the enemy a new impetus 
in their movement toward Washington. The Warren- 
ton pike was almost paved with their dead for miles, 
and the earth was covered with the debris of their 
routed army. As I rose to mount my horse the Yan- 
kee camp fires could be seen for miles in the direction 
of Washington. I stopped at a farm house, about 
three miles from the pike, and fed my horse and got 
a very good breakfast. After breakfast I sat in the 
parlor and conversed with ladies of the house for a 
few moments and then went fast asleep. They did 
not disturb me, but kept everything quiet, darkened 
the room, and put my horse out of sight. When I 
awoke it was quite dark, and the family was going in 
to supper. My hand and head ached fearfully, and I 
felt feverish and exhausted, but after drinking a strong 
cup of real coflPee I felt considerably better, mounted 
my horse and bade farewell to my kind friends. They 
informed me that they had fed a number of our men 
that day. I saw camp fires in almost every direction, 
and could hear the bugles and see the men moving 
about around them. I dismounted and got the ladies 
to wet a new bandage, and bathe my head in tar and 
camphor water and turpentine, and I bathed my hand 
in a saucer of whisky, or rather brandy. I then re- 
mounted and rode off toward the farthest light, in 
the direction of Leesburg. I found the camp of the 
18th Mississippi Regiment by a lucky chance, and 
spent the balance of the night with them. 

Early the next morning I rode into Leesburg, and 
shook hands with Captain Ball, John M. Orr, and 
several others, and met Miss Eva Lee, who expressed 
a great desire to meet General Lee. I told her that 
he would soon be along, and she could have that pleas- 
ure. I called on the Misses Hempstone, and they gave 
me a letter of introduction to their cousins, who lived 
in Maryland, near Poolesville, and I presumed to call 
on them as soon as I crossed the Potomac. I rode up 
the river to just above Conrad's Ferry, where about 



142 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

thirty of us crossed. As we rose the bank, we were 
fired on by a squad of Yankee home guards. We re- 
turned the fire, and they fled at the first volley, and 
disappeared. 

After putting out a picket, we sat on the bank and 
watched Stuart's whole • cavalry corps cross the river. 
For more than an hour we gazed at the long lines of 
infantry, under the immortal Jackson, fording the 
river. The sight can never be forgotten. As the 
straggling line would reach our side, the bands would 
strike up " Maryland, My Maryland," and each man 
in that great concourse would y^ell, and ten thousand 
voices in chorus join in the song. From miles around 
citizens came crowding, and in a short while every 
eminence and point of view had a crowd of living, 
sight-seeing men, women, and children upon it, and 
our men marched by, as if on dress parade. 

Moon and I rode away from the river, and, learn- 
ing from a citizen where the Hempstones lived, we 
rode up to the house. I gave them my letter of in- 
troduction, and we spent a very pleasant hour with 
them. We then rode down the pike in the direction 
of Washington, and soon came in sight of the forti- 
fications that surrounded the city. We spent that 
night within ten miles of the dome of the Capitol, and 
the next morning started back toward Frederick City, 
making a detour, of some four or five miles only, in 
the direction of Gettysburg, and keeping a lookout 
in the direction of Washington. 

About seven o'clock we saw a couple of mounted 
men in front and to our left ; we circled and came up 
in their rear. When within fifty yards of them, we 
drew our pistols. Moon taking the one on our left 
and I the right ; we approached the top of the hill 
on which they were standing, and as they halted us 
we shot them both, and made a dash for their horses. 
But before we got to them about thirty bluecoats 
hove in sight, not more than a quarter of a mile in 
our rear, and they commenced making the bullets hum 
around us. We began a masterly retreat, and for 
four or five miles we put our horses at full speed. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 143 

At a sharp bend in the pike, in a beautiful clump of 
timber, we met a large body of our cavalry, and our 
pursuers rode right into their arms and surrendered. 
Our cavalry did not fire a gun at them, as the sur- 
prise was complete. 

We rode into Frederick City and watched our army 
file through the place. Many laughable incidents oc- 
curred in the town. All over the place the Union flags 
were flying, and not one was molested. Many of the 
women wore dresses with the blue field of stars on their 
breasts, and the red and white stripes of the Yankee 
flags forming the skirt. Many wore the Yankee flag 
pinned to their breasts, and as our boys would march 
by they would tap the colors on their breasts and say: 

" Here's the flag, boys, to fight under." 

In fact I did not see any but Union sentiments 
expressed in the place. 

At one street corner there were six or eight young 
ladies, all clad in Union colors, with a superabundance 
of small Yankee flags which they waved in our faces 
as we passed. One young lady, with a large flag in 
her hand and a small one pinned to her breast, leaned 
on the gate, and with flushed face waved the colors 
almost in the face of one of the men, saying: 

" Close up, you ragged Rebs." 

One tall Texan halted right in front of her and 
said: "You had better take down your flag, for the 

Texans are h for charging breastworks where 

Yankee flags are flying ! " 

The next day Moon and I recrossed the Potomac 
and joined Jackson as he was crossing the Shenan- 
doah on his way to Harper's Ferry, where were some 
ten thousand Yankees under Colonel Dixon S. Miles. 
I passed the 13th, 17th, and 18th Mississippi Regi- 
ments on this march, and shook hands with many of the 
boys whom I had not seen for months. 

Our forces were soon hotly engaged with the enemy 
on the heights in and around Harper's Ferry. I got 
a good position above the south end of the bridge, and 
was soon sending my missiles of death into the ranks 
of the Yankees, picking off^ the most conspicuous 



144 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

officers. I saw the 18th Mississippi scale the nearly 
perpendicular walls of this almost impregnable fortifi- 
cation, gain the plains above, and silence the fire of 
their guns. As the crest was carried by other regi- 
ments the Yanks put up the white flag, and Harper's 
Ferry was ours with but a trifling loss to Jackson. 

As soon as we captured the works, we put out at 
a forced march to meet or overtake the army of Lee. 
As we advanced at a quick step, we could hear the 
guns at Sharpsburg, and we knew that Lee had his 
hands full if Meade had overtaken him. This knowl- 
edge gave strength to the " foot cavalry " of Stone- 
wall, and you could see every man quicken his step as 
the guns sounded nearer. 

I was overtaken by a member of the Albemarle Light 
Horse, of my old regiment, the 2d Virginia Cavalry, 
and he gave me several letters, as he had the mail for 
the whole regiment. 

My letters were anything but pleasant, as one was 
a dismissal from my sweetheart and contained my ring 
of betrothal and my photograph or ambrotype. Others 
told of her marriage, and how she was dressed, and all 
about the wedding. That night I composed the fol- 
lowing letter to her, and as I wrote by light of our 
camp fires I could hear the boom of Lee's guns on 
South Mountain, the prelude to the battle of Sharps- 
burg or Antietam. 



OENONE, THE FAITHLESS ONE 

I sit by the door of my tent to-night. 

Watching the drifting clouds, 
With which the moon, like a trained coquette, 

The light of her beauty shrouds. 

A starry-crossed banner floats over my head 

With a listless, rustling sound. 
And distinctly I hear the sentinels tread. 

In a silence that reigns around. 

I've been dreaming, my pride, of when last we met, 

Of that long-remembered night. 
When the pale stars shone on an upturned face, 

So tearfully sad and white. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 145 

You were wretched that night, my peerless one, 

Or at least you told me so 
As I kissed the dew from your silken hair. 

And you wept that I had to go. 

Remember, love, how we stood that night. 

In the old oak colonade, 
In a little spot where the moon looked through 

The canopied arch of shade. 

How your queenly head on my breast was bowed. 

And your hands in mine were clasped, 
And the words you murmured were low and sweet 

As a summer's wind that passed. 

How we spoke of the time we learned to love; 

The long, long summer hours, 
Of our whispered vows, our tender trust, 

Ah, ne'er was love like ours. 

How the waning night sped swiftly by, 

Bringing the hateful day. 
Till I breathed my soul in one lingering kiss. 

And wretchedly rode away. 

The moon seems to shine as brightly now 

As it did that summer's night, 
And 'neath the gloom of the forest trees 

Makes patches of silver light. 

I have thought of the past, of our early love. 

Till even the crisp night air 
Is filled with the scent of the orange bloom 

That was twined in your braided hair. 

And again do I hear, Oenone dear. 

In the swell of the forest trees. 
The grand old hymn of ancestral oaks 

As they rock to the passing breeze. 

Again do I feel your soft hand's clasp, 

And your proud head on my breast. 
As we stood together that summer night, 

And your lips to mine were pressed. 

But it is over now; that dream is gone. 

For you are another's bride; 
And to talk of love were wretched sin, 

A shock to a young wife's pride. 

The few cold words you sent me once 

Are all that I have to tell 
Why you broke the faith of a plighted love; 

Yet I have learned that lesson weU. 



146 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

They tell me you looked like a queen that night. 
As you murmured the marriage vow; 

That the orange bloom of your bridal wreath 
Looked sullied beside your brow. 

They tell me your laughter was blythe and gay, 
That your step was light and proud; 

That you lavished the smiles, that once were mine, 
On a senseless, flattering crowd. 

Did you think of the blossoms, O faithless one. 

That you used to wear for me. 
When your heart was as pure as that bridal wreath. 

As it never again can be? 

Did you think of the vows that your lips once framed. 

That syllabled wealth of love? 
Did you deem the maid with a perjured heart 

As a wife could faithful prove? 

Did you think of the tears that dim'd your smile 
When your scarf for my sword you gave, 

And I swore it should lead in the battle shock. 
The bravest of all the brave? 

That scarf is steeped in my own red blood. 

Yet I laugh with a bitter scorn 
To think how false is that beautiful one 

By whom it once was worn. 

You have taught me the worth of a woman's word. 

The faith of a woman's heart; 
The tenderest tear that ever was shed 

Is a triumph of woman's art. 

Pass on in your beauty, but yet the thought 

Of our last, our first caress. 
Shall dim the light of your sunniest smile 

With a shadow of wretchedness. 

To-morrow, Oenone, the gray pale morn 

Will dawn on a field of death, 
And the starry cross, that is drooping now, 

Will flap in the battle's breath: 

My brave men will fight for their homes, their loves; 

But I, with a grim despair; 
For aU that is left me, left of the past, 

Is this lock of a false woman's hair. 



I made a neat copy of this and sent it to her, with- 
out name or date. As I am not writing a love story, 
but only a few of the most important events of my 
life, I here dismiss the subject. But I was low spirited, 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 147 

and felt that one I had loved and cherished most on 
earth had proven false. It left me with a very bad 
case of " the blues," something I was not usually sub- 
ject to. Life seemed to have lost its charm, and I 
determined to give my Yankee foes a clear chance at 
me the next morning, as I felt that I would rather go 
to that bivouac beyond the stars. 

The next morning I was in the saddle at the first 
dawn of day, and galloped off in the direction of 
Sharpsburg. As I approached the field, the roar of 
the guns and the crash of musketry was deafening, 
equaling that at Groveton Heights at Second Manas- 
sas. Longstreet had his hands full, and Jackson was 
being attacked by Hooker with something like forty 
thousand men. Glancing over the field, I saw Hood's 
old brigade of Texans lying down, and exposed to a 
fearful fire from some thirty pieces of artillery, posted 
on a commanding height, and from a long line of in- 
fantry. I saw the flag of the brigade go down sev- 
eral times in the open wheat field, and at last it fell, 
and there seemed to be not a hand to raise it. The 
boys who bore that flag were from the home of my 
birth and the State of my infancy, and lived in sight 
of the resting place of my sainted mother; all were 
personal friends and acquaintances. 

Burning with the memory of my faithless Oenone, 
and with a cool determination to die, I dismounted, 
put my horse in a sheltered spot, and made straight 
for the fallen colors of the brigade. Amid the awful 
storm of shot and shell I raised them above my head, 
and stood like a statue. The shaft of the flag was cut \ '^ 
in two several times, and the flag riddled with bullets. ^VT , 
They hissed and spat all around me like mad hor- .^ 

nets ; the canister and grape combed the very earth 
from under and around my feet; the shells and solid ■ 
shot almost swept the colors from my grasp as they 
winged by, and my clothing was often torn as they 
sang around me. It seemed that an unseen hand 
warded them off'; that a special guardian angel 
watched over me, and despite my wish to fall on that 
field of glory, it was denied me. I did not once turn 




148 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

my head, but kept my eyes steadily to the front. As 
the staff would be cut by a bullet I would steady it, 
and wave it above my head. This awful strain con- 
tinued for two long hour-s, and when the " dance of 
death " was over, the enemy was driven from our front, 
and the day was ours, I was not even bruised by a 
bullet, shot or shell, but was so weak I had to lie 
down, and my pulse and heart throbbed with a high 
fever. As I mounted my horse, I could hardly balance 
myself. 

I crossed the Potomac the next day, and soon our 
whole army was over. The Maryland campaign was 
a past history, and the battle of Sharpsburg, or An- 
tietam as the Yankees call it, took its place in the 
annals of the war. 

We camped some time in the beautiful region around 
Martinsburg, Virginia. I continued to have a severe 
pain in my head from the shot I received from the 
Yankee at Manassas, and it would at times almost blind 
me. I would often ride down to the river and have 
some fun with my Yankee friends, and they soon 
learned to distinguish the crack of my rifle and the 
sing of my bullet from others. 

Finding that my headache was not going to cease 
troubling me, I left with my horses and negroes for 
my kinsman, Colonel Edmund Fontaine, at Beaver Dam 
Station, in Hanover County, on the Virginia Central. 
Here I was kindly nursed by the members of the house- 
hold. My skull was trepanned by Dr. John Fontaine, 
and a small particle of bone that was pressing directly 
upon the brain was removed. With my cousins, Kate 
and Mollie, to minister to my every wish, I was soon 
myself again. 

While convalescing, I hunted with Cousin Alexan- 
der, an uncle of the young ladies of the family, and 
a bachelor brother of Edmund Fontaine, the president 
of the Virginia Central Railroad. It was not a great 
distance to Cousin Alexander's or to Mr. Pollard's, 
and we would frequently ramble that far, and spend 
pleasant hours with him and his household. 

Thus I pased some three weeks very pleasantly 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 149 

among friends and kinsmen in and around this neigli- 
borhood. Cousin Ellen Pollard was especially kind 
and considerate, and she has to this day a kind memory 
in my heart. Colonel Philip Aylette's old homestead 
was another rendezvous for us in our hunting expedi- 
tions. Colonel Aylette was a son-in-law of Patrick 
Henry, and his wife was a younger sister of my great- 
grandmother. 

Amid these surroundings, I rapidly recuperated, but 
the wound I had received from Oenone rankled deep 
in my heart, and I was desperate at times. The world 
looked dark and the future gloomy to my inner soul. 
About a month was spent in this neighborhood before 
I felt that I was ready for duty, and prepared for 
the arduous duties of my calling. 

Early in November I reported for duty to General 
Jackson, near Fredericksburg. Along the Rappa- 
hannock I was ever on the Hnes, and for a few days 
before the battle of Fredericksburg I had a splendid 
position down near the river, in front of Barksdale's 
brigade. I had two barrels of sand and an old mat- 
tress stuffed with cotton, and from behind this, through 
a peep-hole, I had a splendid view of the river and the 
heights beyond. Here, daily, I would spend hours 
with my rifle, dealing death to any Yank who came in 
range. It was from this point I fired the last shot 
on the morning we were driven out of the town, when 
the Yanks were within a few yards of us. The fog 
was so thick and the weather so cold that we were 
almost numb. 

We retreated to Marye's Heights, and behind a small 
stone fence we awaited the charge of the Irish Brigade 
of the gallant Meagher. Tliey came up to our lines 
with a gallantry seldom equaled by any troops, and I 
kept my rifle as busy as possible, picking off" an 
officer at each shot. When they were only a few yards 
off, the men of Barksdale's Brigade poured such a 
withering fire into their ranks that but a remnant, 
shattered and broken, were left to beat a retreat. We 
were careful to let as few as possible get back to their 
lines. 



150 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

After the awful slaughter I aided in getting the 
women and children, who had been driven out of Fred- 
ericksburg, places of shelter from the inclemency of 
the awful sleet and snow. We housed as many as 
possible, temporarily, in our vacant winter huts. The 
intense cold caused much suffering before we could 
get them away from this region. I did not do much 
duty, outside of the camp, but I aided all I could in 
the care of the sick, wounded, and helpless. 

On the evening after the battle, when the Yanks 
had been driven back across the river, and quiet reigned 
on every line, a band on the opposite side began to 
play, softly and sweetly, the old Scotch air, " Bonnie 
Annie Laurie." One after another of our bands re- 
sponded, and for a full hour or so soft, sweet music 
filled the whole cold, bleak atmosphere with a weird 
warmth, that only music can convey to the inner fiber 
of the soul. Just before " taps " every band, on both 
sides, sent the strains of that immortal song, " Home, 
Sweet Home," in soul-stirring notes out on the wings 
of the night, quivering and reverberating, with end- 
less echoes from hill, dale, and valley — and answered 
by a thousand brass instruments, bass and kettle drums, 
and more than a hundred thousand living throats. It 
was a time and scene never to be forgotten, for in that 
hour Yank and Reb were kin, and the horrors of war, 
the groans of the dead and dying upon the bleak, 
wind-swept field of death at our very feet were for- 
gotten, and the whole armies of the Gray and Blue 
were wafted back to the quiet firesides of moth'er and 
father, wife and babes, far, far from the bloody, corpse- 
strewn plain beneath us. 

The God of Battles looked down upon Fredericks- 
burg that cold December night, and wrapped a mantle 
of snow over the crimson-dyed field, hiding every 
vestige of man's inhumanity to man, and each soldier 
not on the picket line sank to a peaceful rest, dreamed 
of home and its soft mystic ties, and heeded not the 
howls of the chilling north wind's blast. 

The scenes and incidents of that December night 
are a bright spot, I know, in the memory of any sol- 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 151 

dier who had a spark of sentiment or love in his 
soul, and that memory will at times awaken those 
scenes to his mental vision, as the years take their 
places in the cycle of time. 

In my long life of three-quarters of a century I 
have witnessed many scenes and incidents in the vari- 
ous regions of earth, and through the varied incidents 
of three wars through which I have passed, none made 
such an impression upon me. I have witnessed the 
death-bed scenes of soldiers of every race of man on 
this globe, but I must say that the dying Confederate 
soldier had no counterpart. The savage red man, 
the bronzed Turk, the dark-hued Bedouin of the desert, 
the rugged Russian, the fair-haired Irish or British 
soldier, the stolid German, and the nervous, high- 
strung Frenchman all have their peculiarities when 
they come to face the " Great Reaper." The soldier 
of fortune, who fights for the emoluments of ofl5ce, or 
for the ghtter of gold, has his mode of meeting death 
upon the field of battle, and the agony at times is fear- 
ful to behold — but the Confederate soldier has no 
counterpart on earth. 

I have seen all classes in the throes of dissolution, 
on the bloody fields of carnage, on many hundreds 
of red fields with their bloody corpses strewn, but the 
Confederate soldier has no equal. I have taken the 
dying messages of these brave men, while their life 
blood ebbed away, to mother, father, wife, sister, child, 
friend, or to dearest, sweetest, and most sacred of 
all, the betrothed! Her name was never spoken save 
in a whisper and with a sacred tone, and I would have 
to bend my head and stoop low to catch the cadence 
of that whispered name, and the address. Tears would 
well up as her name would sound faint and soft. These 
men were not afraid to meet their God, nor to cross 
the dark and silent river of death. They only thought 
of the loved ones at home, and the distress that death 
would bring to those dear absent ones in the far-off 
circle, where the oranges bloomed and the soft sea 
breezes sang feolian anthems among the ancestral oaks 
of the old " homestead." No loud or pent-up groans 



152 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

of pain greeted your ear as you took their cold, stif- 
fening hands in yours, but a shght quiver, and then a 
smile would sweep over the clammy face, as the death 
damps would gather, and that message or token was 
intrusted to you. No thought of self, only of those 
they were leaving behind; and when those last words 
were intrusted to your care and the last duty per- 
formed^ they would sink into the eternal sleep, with 
a smile as soft and sweet as that of a babe upon its 
mother's arm. 

This is not an isolated picture I have given you, 
but, as a thousand surgeons of the Confederate army 
can testify, it is the universal picture presented by all 
those falling under their observation. Every soldier 
who has lifted the head of a dying comrade from the 
red sands of the battlefield, or borne a message or a 
token to the loved ones left behind in the sunny south- 
ern home, can confirm it. 

Peace to your ashes, O Confederate soldier, where 
e'er you sleep ! Be it in sunshine or shadow, among 
friends or in an unknown grave among strangers, from 
the shores of Lake Erie to the sun-kissed plains of 
Rio Grande. 

Pardon me, gentle reader, if I let my feelings get 
the better of me, but memory rises in her might, and 
the strong current sweeps me from my moorings. Let 
us turn back to the shores of the Rappahannock, and 
those stirring times that followed as the winter broke. 
My scouting duties increased, and no idle moments were 
spent in camp, but we kept a watchful eye along the 
river, and on the 29th of April Hooker's great army 
began its advance. They held every crossing from 
Raccoon Ford to the mouth of the river, and all was 
activity on both sides. I may say that it was one 
continuous battle or skirmish from the 29th of April, 
until the 6th of May, when the last remnant of that 
mighty Northern army, shattered and broken, found 
safety on the opposite shores of the river. 

During the night of the 2d of May, I rode through 
the lines of Sickles, and along the whole rear of 
Howard's corps, and saw the unsoldierly situation of 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 153 

the latter, composed mostly of foreign hirelings. I 
captured a Dutch lieutenant and three men, one a 
sergeant, in a small sink, while they were enjoying 
a game of poker. Making a detour around Howard's 
right wing, which was stretched out in a long line 
without any guard or support, in front of a dense and 
tangled wilderness, making an ideal place for us to 
creep up and attack without being seen or heard, I 
hastened my prisoners along as fast as they could 
travel, making them break the way through the brush 
for my horse. When in a small road, the lieutenant 
made a break for liberty and I disposed of him and his 
comrades in a short, sharp moment of time. Being 
unencumbered, I soon reached the extreme end of the 
Yankee line, and turning in front of and about half 
a mile from it I rode inside of Stuart's pickets, who 
were keeping the enemy busily engaged in their im- 
mediate front. I took a survey of the surroundings, 
and found a dirt road that led directly in front of 
and parallel to Hooker's line of fortifications. This 
I followed until I came to a cross road that gave me 
a chance to reach our lines in front of Sickles' corps. 

As I was galloping along, I was halted by a 
" vidette," who said that I could not pass that spot, 
as Generals Lee and Jackson were alone there on the 
bridge, holding a consultation, and no one could ap- 
proach. I told them that they were waiting for me, 
as I had important information for General Jackson. 
He called the officer in charge, and I was at once passed 
through the guard into the presence of the two great 
commanders. I dismounted, and going straight up 
to General Jackson, saluted, and told him the situation 
as I had found it only a few hours before. General 
Lee questioned me very closely, and I drew with a 
stick, on the floor of the bridge, the exact position 
of Howard's and Sickles' corps. Jackson sat like a 
statue while I made my report, and as I finished he 
asked : 

" Is there any road or beaten paths that I can get 
the men along the route you came? " 

I replied that I could lead an army, if necessary, 



154 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

along the front and in the rear of Howard's line of 
fortifications, 

Jackson immediately got up and said : " General, I 
will move at once into their rear. " 

In an hour the whole of Jackson's corps was passing 
in front, and out of sight of the skirmish and guard 
line of Howard's corps. 

As we came to the old plank road leading from 
Orange Court House to Chancellorsville, Rodes' divi- 
sion was thrown across it, screening the rest of the 
corps from the Yankee pickets. Stuart's men began 
a feint on Howard's front, and we slipped by in double 
file, and entered the bushes some half mile in Howard's 
rear. We stole along on this parallel line until we 
passed the spot where I had found the Yankee lieutenant 
at his card game. Here we halted, the men swiftly 
formed in line, and with a cautionary signal of silence 
we crept up in the rear. Several deer, rabbits, and foxes 
were scared from their cover and dashed ahead of us into 
the Yankee lines, and such yelling as they kept up, 
as we approached in deathly silence, can hardly be 
imagined. 

When the fun was at its height, and the Yanks 
were chasing the deer and other animals, we came 
out into the opening, not more than fifty yards away, 
each man crawling like a panther, ready to spring 
upon his unsuspecting victim. With deadly aim at 
this short range, we poured our first line of fire into 
their midst. Pen nor pencil can picture the effect 
of these first two volleys. Their surprise was be- 
yond conception, and they went down before our guns 
like wheat before the reaper's keen blade. Such ab- 
ject terror as each face depicted is past description. 
They fled over their works into the arms of Stuart's 
men, and in droves toward Sickles' corps. We pur- 
sued and poured volley after volley into their disor- 
dered ranks, until the men tired of the slaughter. 

As we marched along the inside of those almost 
impregnable, scientifically built breastworks, and drove 
Sickles' men out of their position from the rear, the 
poor Dutchmen had no rear. With a squad of our 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 155 

best men and scouts, I kept them on the go until nearly 
midnight, when we reached Hunting Run. We killed 
them in scores, as we could not take care of prisoners, 
for we frequently had as many as two to one in our 
front. Not one of them could speak a word of Eng- 
lish, and they had only been in the army a few weeks 
at the most, and in America not exceeding two months. 
They were only foreign hirelings, and were here to 
kill us merely for the greenbacks and gold they re- 
ceived. Therefore, we had no scruples of conscience 
in disposing of them to the best advantage. Suffice 
to say I did my level best, and sent as many out of our 
way as my physical endurance permitted. I have noth- 
ing further to say, and no apologies to make for 
my acts. 



CHAPTER XIII 

Ordered to General Joseph E. Johnston's headquarters at 
Jackson — Am sent with supplies and dispatches to Gen- 
eral John C. Pemberton — My most perilous undertak- 
ing — " Whistling Dick " — Adventures at Vicksburg. 

The death of Jackson, and three wounds, again sent 
me to the hospital at Richmond. An order from the 
War Department forwarded me to General Joseph 
E. Johnston's headquarters at Jackson, Mississippi. 

As our train left Meridian, a small embryo city, 
about a hundred miles east of Jackson, the conductor 
gave Lieutenant Williamson, of the 17th Mississippi 
Regiment, and myself a double seat on the north side 
of the coach, as we were both wounded and on crutches. 
Just as we were whistling for Chunkey Bridge Station, 
about twelve miles west of Meridian, Williamson got 
up and went to the tank at the rear of the coach, and 
I moved into the seat which he had occupied, placed 
my crutches with the shoulders just under me, and the 
legs resting on the top of the seat in front, and 
stretched my legs out upon them. I had hardly com- 
pleted the operation and settled myself when there 
came a jar and crash, and I was thrown up through 
a great opening in the car above my head, and out 
on top of it. The coaches were all smashed together 
and dropped into the river. I was unhurt, only the 
shoulder of one of my crutches was jerked loose, and 
I replaced it before I got up. 

I saw at once what had happened. The engine 
and tender had passed over the bridge, when one end 
next to the abutment sank down. The baggage car 
and coaches, going at the rate of thirty miles an 
hour, had struck the abutment with full force, and 
every one of the coaches had telescoped, one through 
or over the other. Mine was broken in two, and laid 
lengthwise on the baggage car, but out of the water. I 

156 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 157 

walked out, dry shod, on a plank placed in position 
by the men on the bank, and as I reached the shore 
in safety I felt that the hand of a guardian angel 
watched over me and warded off danger, and that no 
matter what the duties were that I had been sent to 
this department to perform for my country, by the 
help of this same guardian angel I would succeed. 
Time proved that this surmise, born above that awful 
wreck, where a hundred and sixty fellow-passengers 
met death, was to be a reality. 

Upon the first train out I was a passenger, and as 
I met General Johnston he gave me a warm clasp of 
the hand. As we left the dining-room that evening 
and entered his headquarters, he outlined my duties, 
and that night I left for Grenada. Here I spent but 
a day of two. With a flag of truce, under Colonel 
Foute, I went as far as the Nonconnah bridge, south 
of Memphis. There I left the Colonel and his flag, 
and purchased an old mule and a cart, hired an old 
negro, and carried a load of wood into Memphis and 
sold it. I told the old negro to take the cart and 
mule and continue to bring in as many loads as he 
could, but that he must take good care of the mule, 
as it was all that a band of Rebel cavalry had left 
me to live on. 

I wore a tight-fitting wig of snow white hair ; my 
skin was dyed daily from head to foot with a solution 
of weak iodide of iron, and it wrinkled up. I pretended 
to be an old Union refugee from Austin, Texas. I 
spent several days in the city, and after getting all 
the data I was sent to obtain, I found my negro 
wood pedler and mule, and together we passed out of 
the guard lines without molestation. 

I again reported to General Johnston, and with no 
regard for my three still unhealed wounds and a par- 
tially paralyzed right arm, I was sent with eighteen 
thousand percussion musket caps and dispatches to 
General John C. Pemberton, who had been driven into 
Vicksburg by General U. S. Grant, after the battle 
of Champion Hill, and surrounded by over a hundred 
thousand Yankees. This was the most perilous under- 



158 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

taking that had ever been placed upon my shoulders, 
and especially so in my crippled condition, and I shall 
be very minute in my description of my journey to 
and from Vicksburg, as the historians have agreed 
that it was the most daring ever related, and fully 
illustrated the prowess of the Southern soldier. It is 
a proud legacy to leave to my children and their 
posterity, so I hope the reader will bear with me in 
the recounting and word painting of each incident as 
it occurred in my first trip to and from the besieged 
city, and not tire with my recital. To me it was a 
passage through the " valley of the shadow of death." 
•I left Jackson one bright Sunday morning as the 
church bells were chiming their call, summoning each 
and all to the house of God to join in prayer and 
praise to the Giver of mercies, and the God of battles. 
Just before leaving I gave General Johnston a pair 
of magnificent ivory-handled, silver-mounted pistols 
that I had captured in Memphis, during my recent 
visit, from an officer's trunk in the old Gayosa hotel. 
Just before I left for Dixie, as I mounted my horse, 
with the aid of General T. C. Mackin, of hotel fame, 
I received from Major Livingston Mimms, the Chief 
Quartermaster of the Department of Mississippi and 
East Louisiana, and also of Johnston's army, a carte 
blanche on the Confederate Treasurer, in these words : 

" The Confederate States Treasurer will honor 
any draft presented to him, signed by Lamar 
Fontaine." 

This was signed by the Confederate States Treasurer 
and countersigned by Livingston Mimms, as Chief 
Quartermaster of that department of the Confederate 
army. I was also handed a neat sum in gold, green- 
backs, and Confederate money, but how much I never 
even took the pains to count. In this day of graft 
and get-rich-quick schemes, the ordinary mind does 
not and cannot comprehend the full significance of 
the trust and power conferred upon me, a poor, dis- 
charged private soldier. It has never had a counter- 



MY LIFE AND IVIY LECTURES 159 

part in all the annals of ancient or modern history, 
and it will ever shine, like a glittering star, above the 
dark cesspools of infamy and corruption that make 
the transactions of the present day reek and ferment 
in rottenness around our land, in high as well as low 
places of power. 

As I reahzed the immensity of the trust that this 
paper conveyed to me, and imposed upon my integrity, 
I trembled and could hardly set my steed, but there 
arose in my heart a something, a feeling beyond my 
powers to describe. I was transported to a higher, 
better plane than I had ever before trod, and a de- 
termination that all the gold of earth could not have 
purchased. 

With such thoughts permeating my brain, and flash- 
ing through each fiber of my inner soul, I rode out 
of Jackson as the chimes of the churches swelled upon 
the air. I headed my steed for my father's home on 
Society Ridge, near the line of Madison and Hinds 
counties. Arriving there, I was given a warm welcome 
by each member of the family, and when I told, in 
secret, my mission to my father, his face assumed a 
gravity of expression I had never before seen it wear. 
I told him that I had but a few moments to spend 
with him, as I wanted to reach Big Black River as 
soon as possible, and cross it that night. He called 
the family together, and amid the assembled ones, with 
a fervent prayer and an earnest invocation to the 
Great Ruler of the Universe, he placed me in His 
care. While the tears were yet upon their cheeks, I 
shook hands and kissed each one, waved a last adieu, 
and, putting my horse at a canter, I rode directly 
across country in the direction of Cox's Ferry on 
Big Black River. Reaching it just as the shades of 
night were lending the first dusky tinge to the sur- 
roundings, I crossed over, and was soon at the hos- 
pitable home of Mr, Thomas R. Holloman, and enjoying 
a bountiful and delicious supper with the members of 
his household. 

From Mr, Holloman I got a clear and distinct, word- 
painted topographical map of the region that lay 



160 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

between me and my destination. He had been a resi- 
dent of that county for a number of years, an almost 
daily traveler between his home and Vicksburg, and 
was familiar with every trail or bypath that led to 
and from the beleaguered city. 

For hours I studied his map, until I had them all in 
my brain, and could see them just as he did. A Miss 
Sue Perkins, a private tutor in his family, prepared 
me some fine bandages and a nice lot of linen lint to 
dress my wounds, and I got her to dip them all in 
boiling tar water and dry them in an oven for me. Mr. 
Holloman promised to have me up by daylight, our 
horses saddled, a lunch prepared, a bountiful haver- 
sack of provender to last me a day or two, and to 
accompany me on my way toward the city as far as 
safety permitted. 

We could hear and feel the jar of the cannon around 
Vicksburg as we conversed. It was the last sound that 
broke upon the ear at night, and the first to be heard 
at dawn. 

True to his promise, we were at the breakfast table 
as the day broke, and as soon as we had finished we 
mounted and rode off to the foot of the hills upon 
which ran the Bear Creek Road into Vicksburg. 

As we were about to ascend the cane-crowned hills, 
there came the sound of cannon and rattle of musketry 
from several miles up the road to our right, in the 
direction of Mechanicsburg. We could hear the rum- 
ble of artillery wagons and the tramp of horses just 
in front of us, and I told Mr. Holloman that he had 
better return at once to his home, that these troops 
might scatter, and it would be best for him to be at 
home to protect his little ones ; to go at once and not 
wait until it was too late for safety. He took my 
advice and rode swiftly back. I put my horse in a 
dense canebrake, and crawled as near the road as I 
possibly could without being visible. Flat on an old 
clay root, only a few yards from the road, where I 
could hear all that was passing, and get an occasional 
glimpse, I lay as still as a panther ready to spring 
upon its prey. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 161 

The sound of the guns and the rattle of the small 
arms grew louder, and soon the hum of voices and the 
rumble of wheels and the tramp of soldiers in retreat 
passed by ; and then the scream of a wounded Yank 
in an ambulance would draw near and go by. I shifted 
my position, and found a place where I could not only 
hear but see everything passing either way. Here I 
spent the day. The Yankees had met the cavalry of 
Wirt Adams, and been defeated and driven back. I 
watched the retreating forces and saw many pass in 
the wild frenzy of a rout, and I saw the officers rally- 
ing and bringing them back to reason. 

As soon as night fell, I remounted my horse and 
rode down the Bear Creek road, slowly and cautiously, 
my object being to get as close to the city as possible 
before I turned toward the Yazoo River, as I was 
satisfied that only by water would I be able in my con- 
dition, to carry my musket caps through the lines 
around the city. 

As I was feeling my way along in the dark and un- 
familiar road, there came a short, sharp cry of 
" Halt ! " Before I could reply, or even check my 
horse, it was followed by a crash of musketry. I 
wheeled at once and darted down hill, through the 
cane and brush, and a shower of bullets came after me. 
I crossed a deep ravine and rose the opposite hill, 
while the bullets continued to hiss and hum around, 
and the spat of the musket balls, as they cut the cane 
and brush about me, lent wings to my horse, and he 
exerted himself to the utmost. As I descended the 
next hill, the firing ceased, and I was out of danger 
for the moment from those by whom I had been at- 
tacked. 

The country was very hilly and broken, and 
the cane exceedingly thick and dense. On this account 
my progress was slow. My haversack and one crutch 
had been shot away, and the other crutch weakened 
by a bullet, but I was unhurt. I very much regretted 
the loss of my haversack of food, as there was no 
way to replace it, since I was now well inside the Yan- 
kee lines. With a heavy reward resting on my head 



162 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

for my acts in Memphis, I would have to be extra 
careful, and avoid both friend and foe. 

Just at dawn I came to the top of a high hill that 
overlooked the valley of the Yazoo, and saw below al- 
most a sea of water, as the whole valley was over- 
flowed from the Mississippi River, all the levees having 
been cut by the Yankees. My point of observation 
was from the top of the hill, just north of the Bruce 
house. Mr. Bruce, being an Englishman, and an Eng- 
lish subject, had a British flag flying from his resi- 
dence. From my point of view I could see the Yankee 
camps to the south of me, and a mile to the north there 
was a large command of their cavalry. In different 
directions I saw scattering horsemen, and I could see 
them coming in my direction. 

I rode straight down the hill, and followed a plan- 
tation road that led directly to the back side of the 
field into the overflowed district. Just before I reached 
the bushes and brush and tangle of the outer edge of 
the field, my horse staggered and fell in a soft boggy 
place, from which the water had recently receded. As 
I dismounted, and my coat uncovered the flanks of my 
horse, I saw a ghastly wound from which the entrails 
were protruding, just behind my saddle, and just under 
the shortest rib of my gallant horse. But a moment 
seemed to elapse, after my feet touched the soft muddy 
Boil, before he was dead. 

The earth was too soft and yielding for me to 
bear my weight on the crutch, so sinking on my knees 
I removed the bag of caps, unsaddled my poor steed, 
and lifting the caps to my back I crawled through 
the mud into the brush on the outside of the field, 
then returned and got the saddle, bridle and blanket, 
and hid all by covering them with brush on the dry 
bank of the first water that I came to. Cutting a 
forked stick with my saber, I went on a search for 
two light driftwood logs, known in the parlance of 
raftsmen as " Choctaw logs." Being light and full 
of air cells, these logs float like cork on the water. 
I intended to tie two together and use them as a raft 
to float down the river into Vicksburg with my caps. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 163 

With my halter and bridle reins in my hands, I 
walked along the dry bank of the back water, in the 
direction of the Yazoo River, searching for the logs 
that were suitable for my purpose. I had gone but a 
short distance when I came to a small, well constructed 
canoe, or " dugout " — a boat hollowed out of a single 
log — and not over ten feet long. My heart gave a 
leap of gladness as I saw it. In the bottom of it 
was an old piece of gunny sacking, and a lot of corn 
shucks, all as dry as could be. No paddle could I find, 
but I found a piece of cypress board about five feet 
long, and with the aid of my saber and pocket knife 
I soon had a fairly good one. Getting into my dugout 
I paddled up to where I had hid my caps. I got them 
on board, took my blanket and spread over them, and 
getting in I left the shore, made for the open water, 
and struck out down the stream. 

I thought that I was in the Yazoo River, but soon 
coming into a much wider and stronger body of water, 
which proved to be the Yazoo, I saw that the stream I 
had first entered was ColHns' Bayou. As I turned my 
boat down the Yazoo, I could hear the escaping steam 
from some river craft, and as I turned a bend I came 
in sight of a steam tugboat and seven large ironclad 
gunboats ascending the river in my direction, on their 
way to Yazoo City. I turned square across the river, 
and paddled with all the power I had for the opposite 
side. When halfway over there came from the tug a 
command to halt, but I paid no attention to it. In- 
stantly there was a flash, and a shot from a small 
three-pound gun sung just in front and a httle above 
me, struck the water, and went skimming along up 
the river. I bent to my paddle, and another shot 
threw the water all over me, but before the third shot 
was fired I was in the brush and large timber on the 
west side of the river. I pushed my little canoe through 
the vines, tangled brush, and drifting debris, and was 
soon in more open water. I paddled slowly along, 
thinking that I was safe, at least from the gunboats, 
but I was mistaken. They lowered a large yawl, filled 
it with men, and by dint of hard work forced it through 



164 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

the tangled vines, brush, and cane, and by using their 
oars as paddles, they came in pursuit of me, and the 
race began. Their odds were fifteen to one, but my 
little dugout was made for the purpose of going 
through the thick brush, and in it I had the advantage. 
I glided through the thickets like a deer — they were 
the hounds and I the deer. When the cane and brush 
were thick, I would gain on them, while in the open- 
ings they would gain on me. At one point, about half 
a mile from where they entered the first open water, 
they opened fire on me, and the bullets whistled and 
splashed the water all around me. 

For possibly a half mile or so this was kept up, I 
doing my best to out-i*un them, and they steadily 
getting nearer. In the bow of their boat was a tall 
sailor who began shooting steadily at me. His com- 
rades would keep him supplied with loaded guns, so 
that he kept up an almost continuous fire, and he was 
a good shot, for several balls came so close that I 
could feel their wind. They were gaining on me, and 
I had to act. I placed a large tree between us, and 
as the bow of their boat cleared it I sent a bullet into 
the tall fellow that was doing the shooting, and knocked 
him into the water. I paddled with all my strength, 
entered a thicket of cane, and lost sight of my 
pursuers. 

I was weak from the loss of sleep and lack of food, 
and my wounds were painful from the fearful exertion 
and intense excitement of the race. I recuperated 
for a while, and then moved cautiously forward through 
the cane, across another open space, and entered a 
larger and thicker canebrake. Here I rested for 
several hours, and then going through it I let my 
dugout float with the current. After floating for 
an hour or more, I entered another thicket of cane, 
and pushing deep into it I hid, and lying down went 
fast asleep. When I awoke, the sun was not more 
than an hour high. I felt much refreshed after my 
sleep, and got out on a large clay root of a fallen tree 
and stretched my cramped limbs, dressed my wounds, 
and made preparations for running the gauntlet of 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 165 

hidden dangers that yet lay in my pathway. I felt 
the loss of my haversack of provisions, with almost 
the last chew of tobacco that I then owned, as well as my 
pipe. But the latter loss I soon remedied from the 
joint of a cane, with a stem from a smaller one. After 
a good smoke and rest I sent my little canoe again on 
its perilous way at a fair rate of speed. The steady 
boom of the heavy siege guns around Vicksburg gave 
me the direction I wished to go, and by dark I found 
that I would have to turn sharply to the east, and 
go back toward the Yazoo River, and enter it again, 
as the water was getting too shallow for my dugout 
to float, and I had to pole it along. 

About eight o'clock that night I ran into the river 
just above Hayne's Bluff, and as I entered the broad, 
open channel I gazed upon a never to be forgotten 
scene. The entire hill on the opposite side of the river 
was lighted from top to bottom with colored Chinese 
lanterns, and the whole was a mass of red, white and 
blue lights of wonderful brilliancy. A grand ball was 
in progress, and hundreds of dusky, thick-lipped, 
woolly-haired damsels, with their bluecoat escorts, 
were enjoying the music and promenades under the 
vari-hued lights. Their coarse jests and vulgar 
laughter echoed across the river to where I lay, in my 
little dugout. Many couples were dancing to the 
strains of the military bands, and innumerable boats 
were passing from one shore to the other in front of 
me, as I slowly drifted by, each loaded with a cargo 
of ebon-hued men and women from the mouth of Deer 
Creek, going to join in the revelry on the bluffs be- 
yond. I laid flat in my little canoe, and let it drift 
with the slow current, keeping a sharp lookout on 
both sides as I drifted by. 

It would be impossible to describe my feelings, or 
to put my thoughts on paper with pen or pencil. I 
never felt more distinctly alone before in all my life. 
Minutes seemed hours, and my little dugout lingered 
with persistence in the very channel of danger, tortur- 
ing me with its lack of motion. Both banks were bril- 
liantly lighted, and I could see the fiber of my blanket. 



166 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

as I peeped through a fold of it, as I drifted on the 
waters of the almost tideless stream, with more than 
twenty thousand enemies almost in contact, or touch, of 
me. Reader, can you imagine my condition, and rest 
a moment in my place? With a reward of twenty 
thousand dollars for your body, dead or alive? Weak, 
tired, and almost worn out, with three wounds tortur- 
ing me with their pain and itching, it was a trial 
long to be remembered. I never lost my nerve, nor 
abated my watchfulness, for I was determined to reach 
my destination, and show to those who had placed their 
confidence in me that I was worthy of it. These very 
thoughts seemed to lend wings to my little dugout, and 
it began to move more like a thing of life, and moved 
rapidly out of the zone of danger. 

As I entered between the two great search lights 
that lighted both sides of the river at the landing, I 
drew the blanket up nearer my face, and almost hold- 
ing my breath, I passed by. There were a dozen boats, 
yawls, skiffs, and row boats of all kinds on the river, 
manned by bluecoats and filled with negro women, 
enjoying the music and watching the dancing crowds 
under the colored lights along the shore. It was a 
busy scene. Ten thousand fans, waved by music-loving 
negroes, kept time to the tap of the drums and the 
cadence of the bugles. I passed by this interesting 
scene, and was soon beyond the glare and in congenial 
shadows. I raised to a sitting position, and sent my 
little canoe forward with all the force my feeble 
strength would allow. 

Soon there loomed up in front a danger greater, if 
possible, than that I had just passed. At the mouth 
of Chicasaw Bayou a large fleet of transports and 
flat boats, loaded with supplies of every kind for the 
army of the besieging forces of General Grant, was 
moored. It seemed that a thousand flash lights were 
streaming across the river from each side, and the 
water was almost as light as the sun could have made 
it. I drew the blanket up again, so as to hide my 
face if necessary, and as I pulled its folds over my 
shoulders I noticed a cane fishing rod floating along- 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 167 

side of my dugout. I lifted it in, and the idea of 
passing for a fisherman, if hailed, flashed through my 
brain, so I laid it full length on top of me and 
floated on. 

Just as I entered the broad belt of light cast by 
the search lights, my heart rose to my mouth, for 
across the river was stretched a great cable, and the 
windlasses were at work cordelling a large flatboat 
from the east side of the river to the west. At times 
the rope would rise almost to the surface in the cen- 
ter of the river, as the strain became great on it, 
and I had to pass directly over it. I did not dare to 
raise my paddle or make a motion, as I was in the 
full glare of the headlights. Both banks were covered 
with spectators watching the progress of the flatboat, 
and of course I was in the direct line of their vision. 

As I floated slowly by, passing over the cable and 
coming in front of the sutler's boats, crowds of negro 
men and women were on the front of each boat, and 
planks were laid from one to the other, making an 
almost continuous walk. Banjos and guitars were 
strumming, the negroes singing, and everything was 
in high glee. The song that seemed most popular was 
" The Contraband." I had never heard it before, and 
I caught these words as I floated by: 

" Say darkies, have you seen Ole Massa, 

Wid de mustach on he face, 
Go long de road very early dis morning, 

Like he goin' to leab de place? 
He saw de smoke way up de ribber 

Where de Lincum gunboats lay; 
He tuck he hat, an' left berry suddent — 

I spect he runned away." 

This song filled the air, and echoed from shore to 
shore, and the chorus of: 

"Massa run. Ha! Ha! De darky stay, Ho! Ho! 
It must be now, dat de Kingdom's comin' 
And de year of Jubilow ! " 

This chorus was sung by more than a thousand 
voices, both black and white, in full accord. Over and 



168 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

over it was sung and played, until I caught the air and 
several verses. 

With keen eyes I watched each side of the river 
as my Httle dugout would turn and drift here and 
there, apparently a lifeless log. Amid the din, and 
shouts, and songs that awakened the scenery and kept 
me on the alert, I drifted out into the shadows of 
the darkness, and another great danger was passed. 
But, while the music and songs were still sounding, 
the echoes ringing and reverberating on the air, and 
I was keeping a sharp lookout, I heard the pufF of 
a boat, and suddenly the scream of a whistle just in 
my front. I saw the smokestacks of a stem-wheel 
steamboat looming up almost directly over me. I had 
but a moment to rise and paddle my canoe out of her 
path, a moment more and she would have struck and 
sunk me. As I darted out of her path with all the 
power I possessed, a voice from her upper deck hailed 
me: 

"Where are you going there.? " 
I replied, " To look at my lines." 
" Do you catch many fish now.? " 
" Yes, plenty of them," 

" Bring some up to the Hastings to me in the morn- 
ing." 

"All right, I'll bring you plenty of them." 
Having broken the spell, I drove my little canoe with 
a steady hand down the river. The roar of the guns 
at Vicksburg was fearful, and I could see the flashes 
of the cannon and the light of the bursting shells, like 
gleams of lightning on the dome of darkness in front 
of me. I paddled straight ahead with a light heart, 
for I felt that my greatest dangers had been passed, 
and from the nearness of the sound of the guns at 
Vicksburg I felt sure that by exerting myself I could 
reach the city by daylight, at least. 

But alas, " The best laid schemes of men and mice 
gang aft agley." In an hour or two I struck a broad, 
open expanse of water, at right angles to the course 
I was paddling; and down the left hand side of this 
I could see the flashes of the guns on the bluffs in front 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 169 

of Vicksburg. The course of this stream seemed to 
lead in a direct line to the city. I could not see across 
the water in front of me, and I was confident that I 
was in the Mississippi River. Without hesitating I 
drove my little dugout with increased speed directly in 
the direction indicated by the flashes from the guns. 

Soon the gray streaks of dawn began to illumine the 
eastern sky, the firing grew nearer, and my river nar- 
rower. Soon I found that I was in a pocket of willows 
in a currentless lake. As the day broke I saw that I 
was not in the Mississippi but in a cul de sac, known by 
the river men as " Old River," several miles from the 
Mississippi and in the wrong end of it. On the bank, 
in front of me, a large raft of logs was grounded, 
the greater part in the water. It was a portion of 
the obstructions placed by the Confederates across the 
Yazoo River below Hayne's Bluff" to prevent the Yankee 
gunboats from ascending the river above Vicksburg. 
It had recently been cut loose, and it had drifted down 
and lodged here in an unbroken mass. Much drift 
wood was piled around this raft and where the logs 
lay, part in the water and part on the land; the bank 
was some three or four feet high, and there was a space 
between the logs and the bank large enough to conceal 
my dugout. I took advantage of this, and pushing 
my canoe close under it, I was completely hidden from 
all outside passersby. 

I had scarcely secreted myself when I heard the regu- 
lar stroke of an oarsman drawing nearer and nearer, 
and soon I heard the bow of a boat strike the logs 
within a few feet of me. My little dugout was forced 
as far under the logs as I could possibly shove it. As 
I lay perfectly still there came a deafening roar of 
artillery, and the air was lighted with flashes of ex- 
ploding shells; the fragments began to hiss and fall 
all around ; the earth trembled at the fierce cannonading. 

In about an hour I heard voices on the bank. The 
occupant of the boat, which had landed against the raft 
under which I was concealed, was a fisherman, and 
before the awful cannonading began I could hear the 
fish flutter as he would drop them from his line into 



170 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

the boat. His boat was not more than fifteen feet 
from me, and as the voices on the shore drew nearer, 
there was a hail from them, my fisherman answered, 
and then the men from the shore began to crowd onto 
the raft, stepping directly over my head and forcing the 
logs down against the top of my little dugout until 
I was afraid they would sink it. I concluded to try 
and ease it a little by pushing it out from where I 
had wedged it against the far end of the raft. As I 
raised my arms for this purpose, and glanced back the 
way I expected to move to see if there were any ob- 
structions in the way, a huge, black, rusty, cotton- 
mouth snake of the most venomous and vicious kind, 
gave a warning hiss, and from his open mouth sent 
his forked tongue almost into my upturned face. I 
did not make any further effort to get any nearer to 
him, or to change my position ; I was satisfied to let 
well enough alone, as I was not yet sinking. 

I laid very still for a while and gazed at the horrid 
glare of my new enemy ; his eyes seemed to spread 
farther apart and grow to an immense size, and I felt 
a cold shudder pass over my whole body. I turned 
away from the contemplation of his snakeship, steeling 
my nerves to endure his presence, nor did I again 
glance toward him during the entire day. I have spent 
many long, weary days in my life, but I can truthfully 
say, that this one, under that raft of logs, with the 
Yankees and fisherman in such close proximity above 
me, and that venomous, hissing reptile so close to my 
head and face that I could almost feel his breathing, 
was the longest and the most dreary of all. 

The night I spent at Strasburg in the Shenandoah 
valley, with my head pillowed upon a dead Yank, was 
dreary enough, but it was unaccompanied by any unseen 
terrors, and I was too badly hurt to have all my 
faculties about me. Here I suffered from the pangs 
of hunger ; the consciousness that I was within a few 
feet of an overwhelming number of enemies, whose 
softest whispers I could hear, and should I spit, cough, 
sneeze, or even move, I was liable to betray myself; 
with a loathsome, venomous serpent within ten inches 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 171 

of my face, ready to plunge his fangs into my fore- 
head or throat, and with no chance to protect myself 
from its attack. My thoughts came swift and fast, 
and in a brief space I reviewed my whole life ; in fact, 
I lived a long lifetime in a few moments. 

I watched the shadows lengthen, and listened to the 
conversation of the Yankees and the fisherman as well 
as the talk of a party of sailors from the wreck of the 
Cincinnati, a large ironclad vessel of eighteen guns, 
which had been sunk that morning by the fire 
of our batteries. The soldiers were ignorant of 
the movements of the land forces, and were very ragged 
and dirty looking; the sailors were but little better. 
The longest day must have an end, and as the sun 
began to hide behind the willows, my fisherman and the 
Yanks left the raft. As soon as it was quite dark I 
pulled my hat up on my forehead, so that if the snake 
was still in his position and should strike he would 
bury his fangs in my hat instead of in my face. Then 
I pushed slowly out from my hiding place, and looking 
cautiously around as I entered the open air and seeing 
all was clear, I paddled slowly along the edges of the 
small willows that skirted the water's edge to my left. 
For several hours there was but little change in the 
topography ; it all looked alike. After a long time 
had elapsed and I had begun to think that I was shut 
up in the lake, I heard the escape of steam and the 
churning of the paddle wheels of a steamboat. I 
entered the fringe of willows and again hid. A very 
large ironclad gunboat and a tug passed by, ascend- 
ing to my right. As soon as they had gone by, I 
turned into their wake, and going in the opposite direc- 
tion, I began exerting myself, giving my canoe some 
speed. I was weak, tired and hungry, and my lower 
limbs felt numb and dead. I had lain so long in a 
cramped condition under the raft of logs that my legs 
were asleep, and the sides of the dugout were so nar- 
row they compressed my body, and I was unable to turn 
about to relieve myself. 

I paddled on and soon was in a perceptible current. 
The banks began to come closer together, and in about 



172 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

half an hour I saw the broad, open river in front of 
me, and as a powerful current with waves six inches or 
more high, lapped the sides of my dugout I knew that 
I was in the Mississippi, and at once made for the 
center of the stream, where I knew the current would 
be the strongest. 

As I reached the center and swung around a bend, I 
could see the flashes of the guns and the outlines of 
houses, up on high hills, by the light of the bursting 
shells above them; the court-house steeple was often 
visible from the light of the explosions. On both sides 
of the river were great fleets of gunboats, transports 
and flatboats, moored to the banks, and at regular inter- 
vals large, heavy ironclad gunboats were anchored in 
mid stream, with bridge headlights flashing up and 
down and on both sides of the stream. I saw the 
danger at once, stopped paddling and let my dugout 
float with the current. At one point I almost came in 
contact with a large flatboat with an awning over the 
front deck, under which was a big crowd of negro 
men and women. They were shouting, dancing and 
eating, and a good many Yankee sailors were looking on. 
I could see all kinds of cakes, candies and fruits of 
many varieties exposed for sale. The long rows of 
canned goods made my mouth water, and increased my 
pangs of hunger to a fearful degree. 

The river was so brilliantly lighted from both sides, 
as I drifted along, that I could see the glitter of the 
brass buttons and epaulets of the officers of the gun- 
boats as I passed them. The Louisiana shore was 
covered with white tents as far as the eye could reach, 
and on the Mississippi side the whole shore line was a 
mass of all kinds of water craft. Flatboat restaurants, 
sutlers' palace floating stores, and barges on whose 
shelves could be seen all kinds of goods for sale, were 
there. I could hear the banjos, the loud laughter and 
coarse ribald jests of the negroes and their no less 
degraded white comrades, as my little craft floated 
along the turbid tide of the great " father of waters." 

I fixed my gaze on the fireworks that enveloped the 
city of Vicksburg directly in my front, and with my 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 173 

paddle trailing and my hand in the water, I held my 
canoe steadily in the center of the stream and let it 
float, I watched the great twenty-one inch bomb shells 
rise with their tails of fire, stream across the heavens 
in parabolic curves, and rapidly descend into the city, 
jarring the earth with their explosions. I cannot ex- 
press my feelings, nor the strange glow that swept over 
me as I contemplated this never-to-be-forgotten and 
wonderful panorama — not a make-believe act shown 
from a sheltered stage, surrounded by soft lights, wav- 
ing fans, and fair women, but the stern ferocity of 
war and the living reality. It had to be seen and felt 
to be realized. 

My viewpoint was unique in the extreme. Yes, only 
one, " the only one " in a hundred thousand, to see, as 
I saw it. Here I was alone in a tiny canoe, floating 
upon the broad bosom of the Mississippi River, sur- 
rounded by more than a hundred thousand men, each 
one of whom sought my life ; with a reward of twenty 
thousand dollars resting upon my head, dead or alive ; 
without a friend or comrade in the vast hosts that en- 
veloped me; floating helpless and alone amid this weird 
and wonderful panorama of death. I look back through 
the dim glasses of the past and see more plainly as the 
years roll by, that I was guarded by a special angel, 
who led me safely to my destination. For only thus 
could I have escaped all the dangers that surrounded 
me in that lonely dugout ride down the fleet-covered 
waters of the Mississippi River. With her aid I defied 
the powers that surrounded me, and floated calmly on 
in my frail craft that the waves of a passing boat 
could have sent to the bottom of the stream, despite 
my every eff^ort. 

As I was contemplating and realizing the mighty 
events through which I was passing as a living real 
actor, the current was bearing me along at the rate of 
five miles an hour toward the Louisiana shore, and I 
became suddenly aware that I was very close to it, and 
about to be driven against it. I saw several well-manned 
picket boats out in the stream, crossing and recrossing 
it. I lowered my head, and when within six hundred 



174. MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

feet of the shore, with my eyes fixed on the nearest 
boat, there came a bhnding flash of Hght and a deafen- 
ing roar that made my httle canoe dance and quiver 
hke a thing of life, and the shock almost stunned me. 
I was right up close to a great floating battery of 
twenty-one inch mortars and they had just thrown three 
great hissing iron globes into the heart of the city at 
one volley. With the blood trickling from my nose, 
caused by the shock, I sat up and sent my little craft 
out toward the center of the river with all the energy 
that I possessed. Had I pursued a diff*erent policy 
in another minute I would have drifted against this mor- 
tar raft and been a prisoner ; but I knew that they would 
all be watching the flight of the shells just fired, and 
timing the explosion of each, and would not be paying 
any attention to me. I kept about a quarter of a mile 
off^ the shore until I rounded the extreme northern end 
of the point behind which the mortar battery lay. 

As I hid behind this point just opposite where the 
National cemetery now fronts, I ran my little dugout 
onto a small sand bar, and tried to get out and stretch 
my limbs, but I could only sit up straight; my limbs 
seemed to be paralyzed and from my belt down I was 
numb. I lay on this sand bar until I could see a faint 
streak of daylight breaking over the top of the hills 
and bluff that overlooked the river. 

As soon as it was light enough to catch the dim out- 
lines of objects near me, I pushed off and made for 
the Vicksburg shore, and when within a few hundred 
feet of it, running diagonally across, near the mouth 
of Glass's Bayou, a great shell exploded above me, and 
lighted the whole shore and river with a brilliant radi- 
ance. My eyes at the time were fixed on the point 
where I expected to land; this flash of the shell gave 
me a glimpse of the shore and I saw that it was covered 
with Yankees, all in a lump. I started to back out 
when there was a sharp hail from the shore, " Come 
in." Just then another and another shell lighted the 
heavens and I saw that the Yankees were under guard 
of Confederate soldiers, and I made at once for the 
shore and grounded my dugout at their feet. I at- 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 175 

tempted to rise, but could not, and several of the boys 
caught my canoe and hauled it out on shore. They 
asked me where I came from, and who I was. I told 
them that I was from General Johnston, and had 
caps and dispatches for General Pemberton. They 
ordered me to get out and I tried, but could not raise 
above the gunwale of the dugout without aid. Just 
then I was recognized by one of the boys and my name 
pronounced by him. A shout went up, and when I 
produced my credentials no warmer welcome ever greeted 
a human being on this earth. I was tenderly lifted by 
strong hands, a litter formed with willing arms, and 
with my cargo of caps, I was carried at once to the 
headquarters of General Pemberton. I left my little 
dugout in the care of Captain Lynch, with orders to 
keep it ready for my use at all times. 

I reached General Pemberton's headquarters just at 
sun-up, and was kindly greeted by the members of his 
staff on duty at that hour. I was given a good break- 
fast and a dark room and cot, and was soon in the land 
of " Nod," despite the crash of the shells. 

After several hours of deep sleep, I arose, and with 
the aid of Dr. F. F. Fauntleroy, of Hospital No. 2, I 
was given a warm bath and had my wounds dressed, 
after which I reported to General Pemberton, in per- 
son. My dispatches, which were in cipher, had been 
translated, and I delivered my verbal message to him. 
The General expressed his appreciation of the hazard- 
ous service I had performed in my disabled condition, 
and the great good that I had conferred on the whole 
garrison. I met many friends, whom I had not seen since 
I left our Mississippi troops at Pensacola. That day, 
as I sat on the front steps of Pemberton's headquarters, 
Major Fearn, of Jackson, Miss., Chief Quartermaster 
of Pemberton's army, rode up and hitched his fine iron 
roan stallion to the hitching post, and stepped inside 
the building. He was hardly in, when a twenty-pound 
Parrott rifle shell hissed by and cut both fore legs from 
his horse. As the horse fell, I arose and sent a ball 
into his brain, then ordered the negroes to skin and 
cut the animal up for beef. It was fat and in good con- 



176 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

dition and would make prime eating. I had frequently 
eaten horse meat, in Buenos Ayres especially, where it 
was the chief meat on the market. They dressed it 
and made roast and steak of it, but though quite hungry 
that night, we could not eat it, as it was rank and 
musty; had it been a mare or a filly it would have been 
very palatable ; as it was we had to throw the meat 
away. 

About five o'clock that evening I rode up to Hospital 
No. 2, and got a room and a good bed with Cousin 
Matt Redd Fontaine and Dr. F. F. Fauntleroy, the two 
surgeons who were in charge of it. 

For several days I was quite feeble, and my wounds 
troubled me a good deal, but under the treatment of 
Cousin Matt and Dr. Fauntleroy, I was soon myself 
again. 

I called on General Pemberton and General Tom H. 
Taylor — the latter was Post Commander of Vicksburg — 
and I was given a position at a battery, consisting of 
one eight-inch rifle gun and a complement of six twelve- 
pound brass Napoleon guns, that stood upon the bluff, 
a few hundred yards above the mouth of Glass's Bayou. 
This eight-inch gun was a beautiful Whitworth rifle, 
the finest that I had ever seen ; it was christened " Black 
Bess," and the whole upper reach of the river and city 
front was within the radius of its missiles. My first 
shot with it was a disappointment and I saw that it 
was not loaded to its capacity. I rode back to General 
Pemberton's headquarters and obtained from him a 
written order to take charge of this particular gun, 
and to put it to its full capacity. I then doubled the 
powder charge, rechristened it " Whistling Dick," and 
giving it the proper elevation, I sent a shell into the 
heart of the Yankee camp some four miles away, in the 
vicinity of where Grant was cutting a canal on the 
Louisiana shore. I then sent a solid shot far down 
the river, at a mortar schooner anchored several miles 
below us. The first shot passed the schooner in a direct 
line, but the second swept her decks, and scattered the 
debris into the water, I then sent a shell, struck her 
fair, and made a wreck of her. The rest of the fleet 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 177 

dropped down the river out of range, and the Yankee 
camp on the Louisiana shore was moved to a place of 
safety. 

This gun became famous during the balance of the 
entire siege, and was known to every soldier of both 
armies. It had a mate, far down the river from us, 
but the mate was crippled by a shell that exploded in 
its mouth, compelling the shortening of the barrel. A 
gun of smaller bore, a four-inch Whitworth rifle, was 
in position in Fort Hill, near the Sibley House, on the 
Jackson Road. This gun has often been confused with 
the real " Whistling Dick," named and made famous by 
me. 

I could relate many incidents and adventures that oc- 
curred during my first trip into Vicksburg, but it would 
take up much time and space to recount them all, and 
I shall confine my narrative to only a chosen few. 

I slept at Hospital No. 2, which was the old Walter 
Brooke house, and took my meals at Mrs. Lum's on 
Cherry street, where the new Presbyterian church now 
stands. Here with Generals Bowen and Baldwin, we 
were royally catered to by Mrs. Lum, and had every- 
thing that the meagre markets aff^orded. General Bald- 
win was suffering from a severe wound, and was treated 
by the surgeons from Hospital No. 2. 

On one occasion we were all three in the parlor, listen- 
ing to the playing of Persifer F. Smith's march by Mrs. 
Lum,, when a twenty-pound Parrott shell entered the 
southeast corner of the room, just over the piano, hissed 
through the opposite wall, and exploded on the front 
gallery, tearing away the post at the northwest corner, 
shattering the window lights and leaving Mrs. Lum, 
myself, and the piano covered with dust and plaster. 
She did not miss a note, but finished the piece, rose and 
got her brush and dusted the piano, and then played 
" Dixie." I bowed very low to the shell, after it had 
passed by, and so did Bowen and Baldwin, and we 
congratulated Mrs. Lum on her coolness and bravery. 
She laughed and said, that as it did not kill her as it 
came through, it was no use dodging after the danger 
was past. 



178 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

That same evening we were up on " Sky Parlor," a 
high peak just south of where the post office now stands, 
which overlooked the entire river front and the region 
lying west of Vicksburg, and Grant's encampment on 
the opposite shore of the river. Here we had a signal 
station, and on this evening, under escort of General 
Tom H. Taylor and General Baldwin, Mrs. Lum and I 
were looking through the telescopes at the various vessels 
and encampments of the besiegers. I noticed a Yankee 
leaning against a tree, on the farther side of the tongue 
of land that now is part of the island, which lies directly 
in front of the city. There was a stack of new Enfield 
rifles near us, belonging to the signal station guard, 
and I asked General Taylor to let me try a shot with 
one of these guns at the Yankee leaning against the 
tree, nearly a mile away. He laughed and consented. 
I selected a rifle from the stack and raising the sights 
to their full capacity, drew a bead on a bunch of misletoe 
in the top of the tree, in a direct line over my Yankee's 
head, and fired. Every glass was directed on him, and 
my ball sped true to the mark, and he dropped to the 
earth, a dead man. A crowd gathered around and bore 
him away. A clap of thunder from a clear sky could 
not have produced a greater surprise, as they heard no 
sound of my gun and could not tell from whence the 
messenger of death came. 

On the fourth day of June, at exactly four o'clock 
in the morning, a rocket from a mortar raft went soar- 
ing up into the ether vault, and when about 5,000 feet 
high it sent out a shower of bright stars. Simultaneous 
with the explosion of this rocket, every gun around the 
entire city sent a shell crashing into it, every musket 
flashed, and a hundred thousand hissing minie balls 
filled the air. The shock and roar was beyond descrip- 
tion. All window lights were shattered, the whole 
heavens were lighted with the torches of the exploding 
shells, and the flying fragments fell like hail on every 
side. 

A tall, ginger-cake colored negro preacher, about 
sixty years old, named Jesse, as the crash came, was 
asleep on his blanket on the back gallery of the hospital. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 179 

Old Jesse looked out on the terrible scene and broke in 
a run for a large oak tree, about six feet in diameter, 
that had been topped, and stood within forty yards of 
the back door. Reaching this, he dropped upon his 
knees, and grasping it with both arms, at each ex- 
plosion would ram his woolly head with force against it 
like a billy goat, and say, " Do, Lord." He was butting 
the tree with all his might as we reached the back door 
to watch the fearful display of the real fire works of 
war. Just as we were all out on the gallery, with a fear- 
ful shriek a large twenty-one inch shell dropped between 
us and the old negro, and exploded about four feet under 
the earth, raising a miniature earthquake. The old fel- 
low quit butting the tree instantly, and raising his hands 
and eyes toward heaven, in a voice that could have been 
heard a thousand feet away, he prayed this earnest 
prayer : 

" Oh, God, if you ebber gwine to help me, now de 
time. Oh, God, come quick; de debil gwine git me sho. 
Oh, God, come dine own self, don't send dy son ; dis 
ain't no time to fool wid chilluns." 

To say that we exploded would be putting it mildly. 
I have heard many earnest prayers in time of great dan- 
ger, but I never heard one come so straight from the 
inmost heart before or that had so much soul pathos in 
it and that so fitted the occasion. Here in the calm of 
the present it has a ring of sacrilege about it, but in 
the light of that poor old negro it was a real earnest, 
soulful prayer. And especially when one is cognizant 
of the inner nature of the " old time " slave, who only 
wanted orders from " old master," and not from " de 
chilluns." 

But enough of this. I met many of my friends on 
the lines, and on the 5th I asked General Pemberton to 
have his dispatches prepared and I would take them to 
General Johnston. At the same time I told the boys 
that I would take short messages to their loved ones on 
the outside. 

I spent my last day of this, my first trip into Vicks- 
burg, out with " Whistling Dick," getting the exact 
range of various points of interest around the river 



180 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

front, that I thought would benefit us in a night attack. 
The gun had a sweep of 270 degrees, and was mounted 
on a huge pivotal carriage with rebound spring, on 
a circular iron track. I practiced most of the day, 
trying its range at distant hidden mortar rafts and 
various water craft. Wherever I turned its muzzle 
they would disappear. I was glad to throw my shells 
into the mortar raft that had given me such a jar on 
the night in which I reached the city. 

I forgot to mention one escapade that was important. 
One dark night the Yankees tried to pass us with a coal 
fleet, while I was on watch in front of our battery. I 
had a good glass and was looking at the upper reach 
of the river, when I saw an immense dark body loom up 
on the waters, nearly hiding the bright face of them 
from my view. I watched it darken the surface, and 
while gazing intently saw a few sparks fly upward, out 
of the blackness. I ordered a hot shot from our twelve 
pound Napoleons to be sent into a deserted cabin on the 
opposite side of the river, and when the cabin blazed up, 
lighting the river, we could see a large lot of barges, 
with a tug boat in their midst, slowly approaching us 
from above. Our small cannon began to put their shot 
into it, and the tug began to push her tow toward the 
opposite shore. This tow was protected by bales of 
hay, and I ordered our battery to put some hot shot 
into it and set it on fire, which they did in short order. 
Just as the tow was swung around and headed for the 
bank, the tug was exposed, and I sent a shell from 
" Whistling Dick " directly downward into her stem. 
The explosion was fearful, as her boiler burst and scat- 
tered fire and scalding water in every direction, and the 
sinking of the tug drew barge after barge down into 
the seething maelstrom of the dark river. There were 
several hundred men on this fleet, and by hard work we 
rescued a Capt. W. H. Ward and six men, all we could 
find, and brought them to our shore. 

On the night of the 5th of June, 1863, I was ready 
to make the attempt to return to General Johnston. I 
gave Cousin Matt Redd Fontaine my fine new hat and 
took his old one. I took a long letter from Capt. James 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 181 

L. Perkins to his mother, who lived at or near Madison 
Station in Madison County, Miss. I took this letter 
against orders, as he was my first cousin, and his mother 
my own aunt, and I knew that he would not write any- 
thing detrimental to us or the cause. Many ladies in 
Vicksburg cut buttons from my coat for keepsakes, and 
sewed others on. 

I announced at evening parade to all the men in and 
about Vicksburg, that if they would send in their dis- 
patches to friends on the outside I would attend to the 
delivery of them. I told them that they must not seal 
their letters and only write a line or two, thus : " Dear 

: I am well, and so is — . Yours, 

." This, with the date, was all I 

was to carry out, and each dispatch was carefully 
scanned by a censor at headquarters. I only carried out 
four letters that were not thus censored. 

I made my little boat ready, and at the last moment 
I called on General Pemberton, and received my cipher 
dispatch and his verbal message to General Johnston. 
I filled my waterproof saddle bags with the messages of 
the boys to their loved ones on the outside, and selecting 
those that lay between Vicksburg and Jackson I placed 
them in a beautiful oil silk tobacco pouch, given me by 
Miss Anna Gale, a sister-in-law of Capt. James L. Per- 
kins. This pouch I placed in the rear pocket of my 
coat. When all was ready, about eleven o'clock at 
night, I crept down to my little dugout, pushed off into 
the swift waters of the Mississippi River and paddled 
straight for the center of the stream, where the current 
would be strongest. I wanted to keep on the Mississippi 
side until I got beyond our batteries, then I expected 
to be guided by circumstances as to my future course. 



CHAPTER XIV 

My return trip to General Johnston — Advise General John- 
ston of conditions at Vicksburg — Am ordered to take a 
rest and go to my father's home at Belvidere. 

When about three hundred yards from the shore, and 
just in front of the old Prentiss hotel, I heard a hail 
from our provost guard on the shore, I paid no atten- 
tion to it, but laid dov^n flat in my little canoe and let 
it float by. Soon a shower of rifle balls flew all around 
me, and several grazed the gunwales of my dugout. 
Three volleys were fired at me, and I heard the officer 
in command say, " It's nothing but a log." 

I floated without giving any sign of life for several 
minutes, then raised up and put a greater distance be- 
tween me and the shore. The firing of our pickets had 
put the whole Yankee fleet on the qui vive, as they were 
looking for another coal fleet to come down the river. 
They heard and saw the fire of our pickets, and from the 
lower fleet they sent out a long line of row boats, filled 
with men to intercept anything on the water. 

As I drifted down toward them, I found that there 
was no way for me to avoid being seen and captured if 
I remained in my little craft. When they were not a 
great way off* I eased out of my dugout into the river, 
keeping my face just above the water, and when I saw 
that they were coming directly to me, I turned my dug- 
out over and hung with one arm over it. Just before 
they reached me I reached under and caught the op- 
posite gunwale with my left arm, and when they were 
upon me I sank, holding to each rim of the edges, and 
ducked my head under it, pressing my face up against 
the bottom into the air space. I found that I could 
breathe and I lay perfectly quiet, with my legs hanging 
straight down, with a strong grip on each edge. I 
had just got my position under it when they struck 

182 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 183 

several heavy blows with their oars. My canoe was very 
much shaken, as the blows were made in an earnest way, 
and the concussion was like the crack of a pistol in a 
closed room, and nearly deafened me. I was glad when 
I heard them declare that my canoe was nothing but a 
log. I floated under it for some five minutes longer and 
then cautiously drew my head from under it and looked 
around. I was right against the larboard side of the 
large ironclad gunboat Tuscumbia and through her 
open port holes I could see the men in their bunks, and 
the men on duty on her decks. I could have shoved a 
torpedo half under her and blown her into kingdom come 
if I had had one, and could have killed several with 
my pistol, as not over thirty feet separated us. The 
temptation was great, but I had too much at stake to 
try it. 

I floated with my arm clinging to my canoe, without 
making an effort to control it, until I passed by all the 
boats in the fleet. I then got behind the dugout and 
steered it to a point on the " tow head " just above 
Warrenton, where I landed and righted it, wrung the 
water from my clothing, and got in and paddled down to 
Diamond Bend Landing, at the old woodyard. Here 
I landed as daylight broke, and as I climbed the bank, 
I could see a " tin clad " gunboat just across the river 
from me. 

I fastened my little dugout securely and bade it adieu 
with regret, and taking my saddle bags on my shoulder 
and getting on my crutches, I hobbled off^ to the wood- 
yard, where I could see an old man and several negroes ; 
the old man's son came up just as I reached the group. 
I asked if I could get a horse or mule to ride, and said 
that I was willing to pay for it in gold or greenbacks. 
He told me he only had a very old and poor mare, and 
a young three-year-old, unbroken colt, that had never 
been ridden or handled any. The negroes led the old 
mare out of a stable near by and the colt followed. I 
chose the colt, and after many efl^orts, we got a bridle 
and saddle on it, and with the aid of the old man, his 
son and two negroes, I mounted. He staggered for a 
while and then struck out at a pretty brisk gait across 



184 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

the swamp, in the direction I wished to go. As I was 
about to mount I gave the old man $50 in greenbacks. 
My colt kept a good rate of speed down through the 
swamp that skirted the hills, and kept well in the swamp 
of the Mississippi River, but I soon found that he would 
not last long at the speed he was going, as he was fast 
giving down and beginning to reel and stagger. I 
thought of dismounting and giving him a rest, but I 
urged him on, but he gave a short whicker, every now 
and then, as if in distress and calling for help. While 
pushing my way through a canebrake he whickered 
several times, and suddenly I heard him answered by 
a loud, sharp neigh in front of me, and again and again 
it was answered. I halted a time or two as I neared 
the answering neigh, and the colt seemed to grow rest- 
less the nearer I approached. I drew my pistol, and 
my colt quickened its pace. 

I came out of the cane, on the edge of a cypress brake, 
and in the edge of the cane, just in front of me, hitched 
with a large cable halter, was one of the finest full- 
blooded Arabian stallions I had ever seen in this or 
any other country. I dismounted at once and trans- 
ferred my saddle and bridle to my new-found treasure. 
This horse, I afterward learned, was imported by Judge 
W. L. Sharkey, direct from Arabia, a year before the 
war began. When the Yankees surrounded Vicksburg 
it was taken down into this canebrake and hidden and 
cared for by a faithful old negro. 

As I lengthened the colt's bridle and fitted the straps 
to the stallion's jaws, he would caress my hands with 
his nose and show signs of pleasure. As I mounted, 
loosened the halter strap and set him free, I felt, as he 
stepped off^, as if I had exchanged my dugout for a 
steamboat, the change was so great. He started at 
once in a long swinging walk, through the cane and 
vines, passing by a large hamper basket of com, some 
sacks and a quilt on the ground, where I suppose his 
keeper had his camp, but I saw no one. 

He kept his course for some half hour or more through 
the cane, until we came to the foot of the hills; here 
there was a lane, leading directly up the hill, and he 



A 



/ 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 185 

wanted to follow it, and I had some difficulty in forcing 
him to the right along the outside of the field and back 
into the cane. I followed along down the fence, in 
sight of the hills, for quite a distance, and came in sight 
of a Yankee camp ; their tents indicated several com- 
panies. I could see the men moving about among them, 
and in the road in front. I got in the brush and con- 
cealed myself as much as possible, and kept a sharp 
lookout. I could hear shots fired occasionally in the 
swamps to my right, and some down in front of me 
nearer the foot of the hills. After reconnoitering for 
some time, I rode back a short distance from the hills, 
and then followed down the bottom, paralleling them 
for a mile or so. I then turned back to them and struck 
a lane, broad and clean, between two pieces of new 
ground ; this lane led directly to the top of the hill, 
which was about three-quarters of a mile off. 

I concluded that I would ride up this lane, cross the 
big road on its top, and take my chances on the other 
side, as I had to cross it anyhow. I turned and had 
not ridden more than a hundred or two yards, when 
a Yankee climbed the fence, not more than fifty yards 
in front of me. In one hand was a tin bucket, and 
swung across his shoulders were two chickens, tied to- 
gether, already dressed and ready for the oven. 

He sang out, "Where are you going.?" 

I put on a blank expression, and in north Georgia 
lingo, with a nasal twang, I replied, " I'se gwine to 
Mr. Jonson's camp, to ast him to let me go home." 

" Where's your home? " 

" Up in Gorgy." 

" You had better go with me to my camp ; I've got 
some nice honey here, and some good peach brandy, and 
we can have peach and honey and fried chickens." 

" Yes, but youuns won't let weuns go when weuns git 
thar." 

" Oh, yes, you can rest, and then go on." 

"What is youuns doing now?" 

" Oh, we are down here resting." 

I saw from the letters in his cap that he was a mem- 
ber of Co. G, 25th Indiana Regiment, and he told 



186 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

me that they had been engaged in sapping and mining. 
He had no arms about him and I hated to kill him in 
cold blood, but I knew that if I left him he would give 
the alarm, and I would have a posse on my trail. So 
to throw him off his guard I consented to accompany 
him to his camp, on the solemn promise that he would 
let me continue my journey as soon as we had eaten 
and drank. I asked him the nearest way to his camp, 
and he pointed across the fields in the direction of the 
tents I had seen, and said it was about a mile off. I 
told him that the road around the field was mighty 
rough, and he said he would let down the fence and we 
could go through the field. I said, "All right." He 
set his bucket of honey down, and took off his chickens, 
and as he turned his back to lower the fence I sent a 
ball through his brain, and rode on up the lane to the 
top of the hill. 

As I reached the road several wagons were passing 
in the direction of Port Gibson, and a few straggling 
Yankees without arms. I rode straight up to them, and 
saw that the hill was too steep for me to ascend on the 
opposite side, so I turned in the direction of Port Gibson 
and rode along side by side with them, for possibly half 
a mile, paying no attention to anyone, but keeping a 
sharp eye on my surroundings. I thought that the 
boldest would be the safest course under the circum- 
stances, and my theory was correct. 

I soon came to a road that turned off to the left. 
This I took and rode slowly and carelessly along, until a 
bend hid me from sight. I then put my horse at a 
gallop and he moved like the wind. I let him go at this 
speed for some time before I checked him, as the road 
wound around on the top of the ridge for several miles. 

At last it began to descend the ridge, and far down, 
in a valley below me, I could see a large house sur- 
rounded by a grove of china and locust trees and a 
fine orchard. I took a careful survey of the country 
beyond as far as my eyes could reach. 

As I descended the hill overlooking the house I saw 
six horses hitched in the shade of the trees. I scanned 
them very closely as I approached, and found that they 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 187 

all had side saddles. I rode cautiously up near the end 
of the front gallery, where I had a commanding posi- 
tion, and sheltering myself behind a large china tree, 
I sent out a hail. I was answered by a boy, about fif- 
teen or sixteen years old, and I asked him if he could 
pilot me to a place where I could cross Big Black river, 
and that if he would I would give him fifty dollars 
in Confederate money. He said that he would ask 
his ma. 

He was gone quite a while in the house, and I saw 
and heard no one the whole time he was out of sight. I 
had an uncanny, restless feeling while waiting his re- 
turn, and I kept my pistol in my hand at a ready, and 
my eyes scanning every part of the premises, especially 
the windows of the house. I am satisfied that if a cur- 
tain or window had been raised in sight of me, I would 
have sent a bullet crashing into it. The young man 
came at last, and taking the side saddle off one of the 
horses he replaced it with his own, and mounting, led 
the way. As we passed the house I rode directly behind 
him, and kept my head turned so as to cover it. I 
thought it very strange that with all these side saddles 
visible, not a woman came in sight. 

As soon as we were out of sight of the house I rode 
alongside of my guide and asked him where he thought 
that I could cross Big Black. He said that he would 
try Dr. Nailor's first, and if we could not cross it there, 
that we would try Hankinson's Ferry. Our road led 
directly to the Nailor place, and when we rode up to 
the quarters and inquired for a boat, we were informed 
that the Yankees had taken every one they had. I 
examined the banks and found that they were too steep 
for me to descend, and the opposite bank too muddy 
and boggy for my horse to get out of the water. The 
negroes all looked mean and sullen when I would ask 
them a question, but with one consent they agreed that 
the only place I could cross the river was at Hankin- 
son's Ferry, several miles up the river. I asked the boy 
if he knew the route; he answered that he did, and I 
told him to take me there. 

We left the Nailor place and rode up the river bank 



188 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

for quite a distance, and I tried several times to find a 
suitable place to swim the river, but on account of recent 
freshets I could not find any. 

When we were within about half a mile of the ferrvj 
my guide wanted to leave and return home, as it was 
growing late, but I demurred and told him to ride up 
to the ferry and see if there were any soldiers there, 
and if there were, and they asked him any questions 
about his being there, to tell them he was hunting some 
of his cattle, and then they would not bother him. I 
told him to return as quick as he could, and to let me 
know if I could cross. 

After he left I slowly followed in his trail until I came 
to a thicket of cane, in which I could hide, and see and 
not be seen. I waited long enough for the young man 
to have ridden several miles, and my patience was nearly 
exhausted, when I saw him coming at a fast trot. I 
hailed him, and I saw that he had a scared face, and did 
not seem to be in the same frame of mind as when I last 
looked at him. I asked him if he saw any soldiers at the 
ferry, and he said he had not, but that there had been 
some there the Saturday before, but none since. He 
said the old ferryman told him this. I asked if there 
was a boat that I could cross in, and he said there was — a 
good new one at that. I asked how far it was to the 
ferry, and he replied that it was not a great way ; that 
when I struck the road, I turned to the right and would 
soon be at the ferry. I paid him the fifty dollars prom- 
ised, and he rode off^ in a gallop. 

The sun was just below the tree tops as I got back 
into my saddle and rode slowly and cautiously toward 
where my guide said I would strike the road. As it 
grew dusk, I entered the road, and could see that it had 
been well trodden, all tracks going toward Vicksburg, 
and I, fool-like, never once thought that these were the 
tracks of the soldiers who had just been relieved from 
guard duty. At once I turned down the road and fol- 
lowed it for a few yards, when my horse pricked up his 
ears and looked steadily ahead. I halted and turned out 
of the road and struck out into the swamp on the op- 
posite side, and then toward the river. As I approached 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 189 

the river, the ground became very boggy, and I was 
forced to keep on the ridge. Here the river makes a 
large bend in the shape of an " S," and I followed as 
close as I could to the brink, looking for a place to swim 
it. I again struck the road, and turned toward the 
ferry ; my horse again became uneasy, and I kept my 
pistol in my hand, and my eyes in all directions. As I 
rode into a patch of cane, on my right, I saw that the 
bank of the river had caved and cut the road nearly in 
two. By this time it was growing dark, and as I reached 
the cave in the road, up sprang a Yankee soldier from 
the bank under me, and, with his gun almost touching 
me, yelled out: 

" Surrender, you Rebel s of ." 

I cut his sentence short with a bullet where the ribs 
part. My horse wheeled at the crack of my pistol, and 
as he did so, I was enveloped in a sheet of flame, in a half 
circle from river bank below to river bank above, and the 
ball and buckshot from a hundred and fifty muskets 
flashed, hissed, stung, and sung around me. My hat brim 
dropped across my eyes, both arms, legs, breast, head 
and body tingled, my right arm hung limp and my left 
heel pained me fearfully. My horse sprang forward with 
a fearful snort and two Yankees grabbed his bridle. But 
with my left hand I sent a bullet into each, and cut down 
a third one who put himself in my track. My horse broke 
through the cane like a deer, and for a half mile or so, 
such speed I never saw excelled, and then without warn- 
ing he sprang high in the air, and fell with a crash, and 
rolled over, pinning me under him. 

My horse had fallen on his right side and my right 
leg was fast under him. The ground was soft and yield- 
ing. I drew my extra pistol and laid it by my side, took 
my dispatch, which was in a small glass vial, and sank 
it below the surface of the earth, and then with consid- 
erable trouble reloaded the pistol from which I had fired 
at the four diff'erent Yanks in the melee. Then I calmly 
awaited my fate. My horse lay between me and the 
Yankees ; I saw that he would make a good breastwork, 
and here I made up my mind to die. 

After waiting for some time and hearing no attempt 



190 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

to follow me, I began to look about for some way to 
escape. I made many efforts to pull my limb from under 
my horse, but all my efforts seemed futile, but, by hercu- 
lean efforts, I at last succeeded. As I rolled free I 
found that both crutches had been shot away, and that 
my saber scabbard was cut nearly in two ; the hook that 
held it up was missing and my left boot heel was gone ; 
my breast and left hand were bleeding, my head ached, 
my right arm was quite numb, and my body burned and 
tingled. I drew my saber and cut a small forked bush 
and trimmed it for a crutch ; taking off my saddle bags, 
I loosened the saddle, removed my blanket and bridle, 
and laying them across my shoulders I bade my gallant 
steed, from whose side I could see the entrails protruding 
in seven places, a sad farewell. 

I hobbled down to the river bank, gathered some dry 
brush and small logs, covered them with my blanket, 
and bound them together with my bridle reins. Placing 
my coat and saddle bags on my improvised raft, I shoved 
it off and swam the river, landing not more than two hun- 
dred yards above where I had been ambushed. Putting 
on my coat, and taking my saddle bags, I began a slow 
and painful journey toward the southeast. 

I forgot to mention that after I got out from under 
my horse, I had a long hunt for my dispatch before I 
found it, and it must have been eleven o'clock before I 
got to the river. I suppose that the Yankees thought, 
from the speed my horse made when he dashed away, 
that it was useless for them to try and overtake me on 
foot. 

My path and course led me across a wide, open old 
field with serrated hills and deep gullies. As soon as it 
was daylight, I could see a large white house on a hill, 
and a deep gully led up to the rear of it near the smoke 
house. I stopped and took an inventory of myself, as 
the sun was now well up and I within half a mile of 
succor I hoped. I hid by a water hole in a gully ; took 
off one of my shirts, made some bandages of it, and pro- 
ceeded to make myself presentable. 

I was wounded in the right leg, my right ann was 
partially paralyzed and of but little use; my left hand 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 191 

badly torn with a ragged hole through it, and the end 
of my little finger cut off and hanging by a thread. A 
ball came out of my breast with the clothing, as I re- 
moved my shirts ; my forehead, neck and jaw were bleed- 
ing slightly, and I could feel a great welt across my 
forehead; my left boot heel was shot away, and my heel 
considerably swollen and painful ; my sword belt and the 
sword scabbard were cut nearly in two, while the blade 
was slightly bent ; my clothing was cut up with many 
bullets, and looked more fit for the rag bag than to be 
worn, especially as they were very muddy as well as 
bloody. 

After making myself as decent as the circumstances 
permitted, I cut a cane from a small clump on the side 
of a ditch; splitting open a joint, I laid my finger in it 
and pressing the ends together, I bound it securely in 
the hollow joint so it could not slip. Having completed 
my toilet, I began a slow and painful ascent of the gtilly 
that led up to the back of the residence that I saw on 
the top of the hill in front of me. 

In about an hour after my wounds had been dressed^ 
I climbed the gully bank just in the rear of the smoke- 
house, and reached a plank fence covered with vines, on 
the edge of a plum thicket, and here I laid in wait, listen- 
ing and watching. I had been on watch but a few 
moments, when a little negro, about ten years old, came 
within a few feet of me. I drew my pistol and pointed 
it directly at her and asked if there were any Yankee 
soldiers about. Scared almost to death, and with eyes 
bulging out, she answered in a stammering voice that I 
knew was the truth on the spur of the moment. 

" No, sir ! hain't been none here since lass Sunday." 

I did not hesitate another moment, but climbed the 
fence and walked out past the smoke-house into the back 
yard, between the house and the kitchen. A yellow negro 
man, with an apron on, was just coming down the steps 
out of the kitchen, and a tall, fine looking lady, dressed 
in deep black, was on the back gallery. 

I addressed her with, " Good morning, ma'am ! Can I 
get a horse or a mule from you.'' I am badly wounded, 
and must go on." 



192 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

She replied, " No, you Yankees have not left me a 
four-footed animal on the place." 

" Can I get something to eat? I am very hungry." 

" Yes, but you don't deserve it at my hands." 

" Can you let me have some lint and a few bandages ? " 

" Yes." 

" Would you let that boy get me a tub of hot water, 
and aid me in dressing my wounds.? " 

" Yes, get him the water, and take him in the office, 
then come in the house and get the lint and bandages, and 
help him dress his wounds." 

I hobbled into the office, and the negro brought a tub 
of hot water, and I made him bring a small bucket of 
pine tar and dissolve it in the water and add a little tur- 
pentine. And after a good bath in this, with his aid, I 
laid on the lint and bandaged all my wounds well, and 
taking the best looking shirt I had, put it on top, and 
soon I felt like a new man. 

The darky carried me around to the front on a pair 
of very good straight stick crutches with red cushioned 
tops, and from there into the dining room. Here I saw 
seven ladies. The tall lady whom I met on the back gal- 
lery and who gave the boy his orders, was seated at the 
head of the table, and at the foot was a small, pale, deli- 
cate lady, about thirty years old, who seemed to be very 
sad and suffering greatly. Just opposite me sat a beauti- 
ful dark-eyed, curly-haired girl, a perfect Hebe, not 
more than seventeen or eighteen years of age. She 
seemed to have been chosen as the spokesman of the 
party. I bowed as gracefully as my condition would 
permit, and said: 

" Good-morning, ladies. We have promise of a beauti- 
ful, bright, warm day." 

They all bowed very stiffly in return, but uttered not 
a word in reply. 

As I took my seat, Hebe asked, " Where are you 
from? " 

I replied, " I am just out of Vicksburg." 

" Oh, you are a Yankee then? " 

" No, I am not." 

" How did you get out? " 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 193 

" Only my God and General Johnston will know that 
for some time to come." 

" Is that so ? Well, sir, do you know many people in 
Vicksburg? " 

" I know a great many soldiers, and some of the 
citizens," 

While this conversation was going on I was doing my 
best to get the little tobacco bag, in which I had placed 
the dispatches from the parties living between Vicksburg 
and Jackson, that the boys had given me. And after 
getting it out, I had some difficulty in opening it. I 
finally succeeded, and the thought struck me that these 
intensely Southern ladies would be the very ones to in- 
trust with the delivery of these dispatches. I pulled one- 
half out, and left it loose. The little dark-eyed Hebe 
plied her questions, and as luck would have it, as she 
named her friends, I knew the most of them and I saw 
the ice in their manners was slowly melting; all were 
growing more pleasant toward me. The pale, delicate 
lady at the foot of the table cut up my food, and the 
negro boy poured a thick glass of cream and placed it 
before me, and was extra polite and attentive at a signal 
from his mistress. 

In a short lull from the fire of Hebe's questions, the 
pale lady asked: " Do you know Major McCabe of the 
33rd Mississippi Regiment? " 

" Yes, ma'am," I replied. " He has been quite ill for 
some time with typhoid fever, but before I left he was 
able to return to duty with his regiment, and I had the 
pleasure of telling him good-bye just before I left Vicks- 
burg." 

As I finished speaking, I glanced at the dispatch that 
I had partly drawn out of the tobacco pouch, and saw 
it was his note to his wife, informing her of his recov- 
ery and return to duty. I drew it out and said, " I have 
a note from him to his wife, and possibly you may know 
his handwriting? " 

With this I handed the note to her. She gave one 
glad shriek, kissed it and nearly fainted. All the ladies 
rushed to her at once and read the message. She recov- 
ered, and throwing her arms around me gave me a loving 



194 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

kiss. Every eye was wet with tears of joy, and such a 
greeting as was awarded me by these ladies can never 
be forgotten while life lingers. 

But I can assure you my wounds felt the pressure of 
each tender, warm-hearted hug, as they attempted to 
make up for the cold and callous reception given me 
while I was supposed to be a Yankee escaping from the 
beleaguered city, and bent on plunder and possible mur- 
der. The revulsion of their feelings was beyond con- 
trol and I appreciated and understood them. I felt that 
I was a Southern soldier, and all that that meant. 

They all introduced themselves, but I only remember 
Mrs. Lum, the owner of the plantation, and Mrs. Mc- 
Cabe. Mrs. Lum said she had an old mule on the place 
that was twenty-one years old, and that I could have 
her. After breakfast an old gray mule was brought up 
from some hidden recess or hollow among the hills, and 
a lot of old quilts, and a sheep skin was rigged up into 
a saddle, with rope stirrups. I gave them all the dis- 
patches that they could send to the families of the boys 
in the neighborhood, and bidding all farewell, mounted 
my old mule and rode away. She traveled at a very slow 
and dignified gait, — a gait all her own, — and after 
worrying myself and nearly breaking my crutches over 
her head trying to increase her speed, I gave up in 
disgust and concluded to let her have her way. She 
carried her head crooked a little to one side, and had a 
very knowing look in her eyes, and I christened her the 
" Widow Bedott," and let her jog along on her own 
account. 

I did not follow any beaten trail or road, but cut 
across the country so as to avoid all thoroughfares. 
While pursuing the course I had marked out, I came 
directly into a road that led due south to Rocky Springs. 
From my point of view I could see down this road for 
about a mile, and about a half a mile off I could see a 
man approaching riding a fine horse. He was dressed 
in fine, dark clothes and looked like a Yankee. I dis- 
mounted from the Widow Bedott, and fastened her to 
a sassafras bush near a clump of blackberry bushes, and 
hid myself in a slight depression on the left of the road. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 195 

On the opposite side was an open field with a high rail 
fence. 

From my position I had a good view of the road both 
ways and I waited patiently for my victim. He soon 
came in sight. I saw he was a doctor, and I waited until 
he was opposite me, and had no chance to escape. I 
brought my pistol to bear on him, ordered him to halt 
and dismount. I never saw an order more quickly 
obeyed in my life. I commanded him to hitch his horse 
to the fence and move off. He obeyed at once. I then 
rose from my position and mounted the mare, and laid 
his saddlle bags on the fence. I then told him that 
I was ready to parley with him, and would pay him any 
reasonable price for the mare, in gold, greenbacks or 
Confederate money. He found his tongue for the first 
time and told me that the mare was not his, but one he 
had borrowed from a Mrs. Payne. I told him that made 
no difference to me, that I was going to take her any- 
how. He would not accept any kind of money, and in- 
sisted that he could not dispose of her, as she did not 
belong to him, but to a widow. I finally gave him 
an order to take her, wherever found, and told him that 
I would leave her at some point on the road to Jackson, 
and I gave him the order. I then pointed to the Widow 
Bedott and made him a present of my late steed. 

I rode off at a brisk pace, still avoiding all roads as 
much as possible. As night fell, I concluded to leave 
the woods and take to the main traveled road. I came to 
a place where there had been a camp of soldiers ; a few 
fires were smouldering, and as I rode into it a gruesome 
sight broke upon me. My horse shied to one side, and 
I saw hanging to a tree, swinging to and fro, two men, 
one a negro and the other a white man. Their eyes and 
tongues peeped out and thousands of flies swarmed over 
them. They looked as if they had been hanging several 
days, and I felt a cold shiver run through my veins as 
I almost came in contact with them. 

About fifty yards from this spot, I came into the road 
leading from Rocky Springs in the direction of Ray- 
mond, and I rode rapidly down it. At about one o'clock 
at night I was in sight of Raymond, and as I entered 



196 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

the suburbs of that place I saw two Yankee officers just 
about to enter a yard. I drew my pistol and was in a 
few feet of them when I ordered them to halt and surren- 
der. They informed me that they were prisoners, both 
wounded and on parole, and that there were a good 
many more in Raymond at the hospital in the court- 
house, in charge of Dr. Rice of Vicksburg, and that 
they had been there ever since the battle of Raymond. 

I let them pass and rode on to the court-house, and 
found a sergeant and several men on guard. I dis- 
mounted and showed my orders to the sergeant, and told 
him to get me the best horse in the place, no matter to 
whom it belonged. He said the doctor had the best. I 
told him to have the horse at the door as soon as possible. 
I then went up the stairs and had my wounds redressed 
and bandaged, left a large number of dispatches to be 
delivered around Clinton and Raymond, and then gave 
orders to let the doctor (from whom I had taken Mrs. 
Payne's mare) have her upon presentation of my order 
for her. 

I mounted my new horse, and set off at a brisk gait 
for the city of Jackson, just eighteen miles away, which 
place I rode into hungry, tired, and very sore. I went 
at once to headquarters and delivered my dispatches and 
receipts to Col. Benjamin Ewell, General Johnston's 
chief of staff. I then went at once to the telegraph office, 
and turned over all the dispatches from the soldiers in 
Vicksburg, to be sent to their loved ones in the different 
States. I spent several hours, in writing and mailing 
others, telling their families why their messages were so 
short. I then walked all over Jackson and delivered in 
person all that had been intrusted to me. 

I tried at many places to get lodgings, but did not 
succeed; I could not even get a drink of water, nor 
could I get a mouthful to eat. I returned his saddle- 
bags to General McMackin, and to Major Livingston 
Mimms, the gold, greenbacks, and Confederate money, 
less the $50.00 in greenbacks that I paid the old man 
at the woodyard at Diamond Bend for my young colt, 
and the $50.00, in Confederate money, I paid the youth 
who piloted me into the hands of the Yankees, at Hank- 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 197 

inson's Ferry. After my settlement I had but $2.00, in 
Confederate money, left. 

I walked up to the Bowman House and asked if they 
would give me a room and board until I could hear from 
home, and get some funds, but the proprietors refused. 
I bought two small round black ginger cakes, from a 
little negro, who was peddling them on the street, and 
paid her a dollar a piece for them. I got a drink of 
water out of Pearl River as I ate them. As a last resort, 
I made application to the hospital for a cot, and that 
too was refused on the ground that they were full. 

General Johnston did not come down to Jackson from 
Canton, that day, and I could not leave until I had com- 
municated with him. The day was a very tiresome one 
to me, and late in the evening I again went to the hos- 
pital and had my wounds dressed, and as the night wore 
on, I laid down on the stone steps of the capitol build- 
ing and slept as sound as a babe until dayhght, and 
woke considerably refreshed, as it was the first sleep I 
had had since leaving the city of Vicksburg, the night 
of the fifth of June, and this was now the morning of 
the ninth of June, and only about six hours of sleep to 
my credit. 

At ten o'clock General Johnston came down from 
Canton, and I repaired to his headquarters, gave him 
Pemberton's verbal message and told him the exact con- 
ditions prevailing in and around Vicksburg as I saw 
them. He gave me a cot at headquarters, and I slept 
until about 2 p. m., when I was roused up and ate my 
first meal since my breakfast with the ladies at Mrs. 
Lum's. I had turned Dr. Rice's horse over to the Quar- 
termaster, and General Johnston had given me another, 
telling me to ride out somewhere in the country, where 
I could get a place to stay, to have my wounds dressed 
regularly, and to take a good rest until I heard from 
him. I then decided that I would go out to Belvidere 
and spend my rest at my father's, who was at the time 
Chief of Ordnance of the Department of Mississippi, 
and at home on furlough. General Johnston furnished 
me with all the money I might need. 



CHAPTER XV 

Am ordered again to Vicksburg — At Yazoo City — Return 
to Jackson — Am wounded and sent to hospital at 
Selma, Ala. — Report to General Bragg and join Gen- 
eral Longstreet — Receive major's commission. 

I LAID in a good supply of underclothing, several 
negligee shirts, and a pair of new crutches, and hanging 
these upon my arm I mounted my horse and rode off to 
Belvidere. For a week I enjoyed myself and got all the 
real rest I needed. At the end of a week I got a message 
from General Johnston to report at once, and I an- 
swered it in person. My orders were to go again to 
Vicksburg, and this time to establish, if possible, a 
route for a line of couriers, to and from Vicksburg, 
either up and down the Yazoo River by the first line I 
took, or by the Mississippi River, from a point above 
and outside of the Kne of the land forces. 

I went by way of Cox's Ferry again. I met General 
Cosby near Mechanicsburg, and taking Captain Saun- 
ders with six men, I crossed little Sunflower, and keeping 
in the swamps and thickets we crossed Deer Creek, and 
got to Old River. Here we made a depot in the brush, 
and had our dugouts nearby. As the caps were brought 
on horseback, we would load our dugouts and paddle 
down the river into the city before daylight. I only 
made one trip with Captain Saunders, and we carried in 
200,000 caps with us, reaching the city without any 
serious trouble. 

I was quite weak, and remained in Vicksburg, as I was 
not strong enough to paddle my boat up stream against 
the current of the Mississippi, with only one sound arm. 
I took my place with " Whistling Dick," and let the 
Yanks hear from me as the opportunity offered. I 
visited many of the boys at night, and chatted with them 
of home and the loved ones there, and helped to make the 
horrors of the siege as light as possible. 

198 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 199 

The night of the third of July, after the white flag 
of surrender had been hoisted and the guns had ceased 
their thunder, I got about four hundred men together, 
and lowered old " Whistling Dick " into the bottom of 
the Mississippi River, and she sleeps there now under 
two hundred feet of mud. Then I got in my little dug- 
out, and tying my crutches into a cross I fastened my 
coat and a shirt to them, hoisted and lashed them to my 
dugout seat, and taking my paddle for a rudder, with a 
strong wind in my favor, I floated out on the river. 
Daylight overtook me just opposite Millican's Bend; 
here I landed, and on my crutches walked up to the 
Duval place. There I got an old " box-ankled " mule 
into a stall, and after a little coaxing, I got a rope halter 
around her neck; I then got some bagging and hemp 
rope, and rigged a saddle and halter bridle, and by tying 
loops in the rope girth I had very comfortable rests or 
stirrups for my feet. My saddle was soft and pleasant, 
and, after a short trial, everything was adjusted very 
comfortably. 

I rode across the swamp in the direction of Yazoo 
City. I came to a large pile of cotton, possibly a thou- 
sand bales, hidden on the back side of a plantation ; this 
I immediately set on fire, as I knew the Yankees would 
soon take charge of it, as they would cover the whole 
country. The cartel for the surrender had been signed 
on the third of July, and to-day, the fourth, they were 
marching into the city. With these thoughts in my 
mind I had no hesitancy in applying the torch to this 
huge pile of cotton, then worth about one dollar a 
pound in the marts of the North. 

After firing the cotton, I rode away from the smoke 
of it as swiftly as my old gray mule would permit, fol- 
lowing an old blind road, seemingly that had not been 
traveled for years, as it was grown up in places with 
vines and small bushes. I came to a lake, that seemed 
to have once had a bridge or ferry across it, and on the 
opposite side I could see the road leading away from it. 
I urged my old mule to enter the water, but she would 
back her ears and plant her feet and positively refuse to 
budge in the direction of the water. At last, weary and 



200 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

mad, I drew my pistol and was about to send a bullet 
into her brain, when I thought of an expedient I had 
once read of, used by a Mexican on the Rio Grande River 
years before, to compel his pony to take to the water 
when he had stubbornly refused, as my old mule was now 
doing. In imitation of the Mexican, I pointed her head 
straight at the water, laid my pistol barrel parallel with 
and flat upon the top of her tail bone, and gripping a 
firm hold with my feet and hand, I pulled the trigger. 
She gave a mighty leap and landed far out in the lake, 
and I went down to my ears. She rose in a second, as 
her feet touched the bottom, and made fast time for the 
opposite shore. My bullet did not touch her, but the 
flash took some of the hair off^ and scorched her hide and 
tail, and raised a small blister. 

I crossed several streams after this, notably the Big 
Sunflower River, before I reached the eastern edge of 
the swamp, but at none of them did I have any great 
trouble, for upon reaching the water's edge, I would 
simply point her head straight at the spot I wanted her 
to enter it, and when all was ready I would touch her, 
and she went in like a flash, reminding one of a boy 
touching off^ his toy cannon to celebrate some holiday. 
As I would place my hand behind the saddle, and cluck, 
she never hesitated ; in fact her movements were so quick, 
I had all I could do to stay on my pile of bagging. 

On Deer Creek I rode up to a house and asked if I 
could get something to eat, and also asked for an old 
saddle, if one could be spared. I was told to get down 
and come in. I did so. 

As I entered the door a man met me and said, " You 
are my prisoner." 

" I reckon not," I replied. 

He sprang for a double-barreled gun near him in the 
hall. I drew my pistol and ordered him to halt, told him 
not to touch the gun, if he did I would kill him. I then 
commanded him to surrender. He refused and reached 
for his gun, and I sent a bullet into his brain, and he 
dropped dead upon the floor. I picked up his gun, re- 
treated down the steps and remounted my mule. I have 
thought since that from the way he acted he was under 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 201 

the influence of whiskey, and somewhat intoxicated, but 
under the circumstances I was forced to do what I did. 
I saw several negroes at a distance, but they did not 
attempt to molest me. I think that he was the overseer 
on the place, not the owner, and if I had not killed him 
he would have given me much trouble and annoyance. 
I was anxious to get out and report to General Johnston 
and wanted no unnecessary delays. 

I rode on across the valley, and before dark I crossed 
the Sunflower River, and at daylight came to a large 
plantation on Silver Creek, belonging to a Mrs. Den- 
man. I rode up to the front gate and hailed. A negro 
woman came to the front, and I asked if I could get 
a saddle and something to eat. She retreated into the 
house and after a while a negro boy came round with an 
old English saddle tree, without stirrups, and said it was 
all the man's saddle " Mistes " had. I put it on the old 
mule and it rested me very much. 

I followed up the creek for several miles, and came to 
a road leading directly across the swamp to Yazoo City. 
Here I stopped in front of another dwelling house and 
asked for something to eat. An elderly lady of the 
true type of Southern womanhood, a Miss Mag Bennett, 
came to the gate and gave me two hoe cakes of com 
bread, with honey and butter spread between their cov- 
ers. She said that breakfast had long been over, and 
that this was all she had in the house. I thanked her, 
and asked how far it was to Yazoo City, and if I would 
have any trouble in finding my way across. She an- 
swered that the road was clear, and no Yankee soldiers 
were in the way. I thanked her for her kindness and 
rode off^, pinching small chunks from my com pones and 
chewing and swallowing the fragments very slowly, 
realizing fully how hungry I was, as I had not had a 
mouthful to eat for four days. As I finished the last 
morsel I felt rested, but still very hungry. 

The region I was crossing is very low and unin- 
habited, and subject to deep annual inundations from 
the Mississippi River, and is drained by Panther Creek. 
About twelve o'clock M., I came to a large two-story 
residence, that was set back some distance from the 



202 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

road. It had a large lawn in front, and I could see a 
number of horses hitched about in various parts of this 
lawn, and some twenty or thirty Confederate soldiers 
lolling around. I rode up to the gallery and asked if 
I could get dinner. I was answered in the affirmative, 
and one of the soldiers aided me in dismounting and 
fastened my old mule. 

As I took my seat on the gallery, I asked if they had 
any news from Vicksburg; and they answered that they 
had none. I told them that it had surrendered on the 
third of July, and that the Yankees had marched in and 
taken possession on the fourth. They would not believe 
it. I told them that I had just made my escape from 
there, and they merely laughed at me. I said no more 
on the subject, but merely asked if they had heard any 
heavy firing from that direction lately. 

A few moments afterward I was invited in to dinner, 
and took my seat at the table. Several ladies were 
present, and one was particularly kind to me. Seeing 
my crippled condition, she aided in cutting up my food. 
As my crutches were leaning against the wall, a little 
negro girl brushed against and knocked them down ; this 
lady picked them up and apologized for the servant's 
carelessness. 

At that time I was too much engrossed with the busi- 
ness before me to pay much attention to anything else. 
I was somewhat riled because they did not believe that I 
told the truth about the surrender of Vicksburg. I did 
not know then, nor did I have the faintest idea, that the 
young lady who cut up my food and picked up my 
crutches was to be my companion and loving helpmate 
and guide through more than forty years of life, after 
peace had spread her snowy wings over the whole land. 
I was certainly a forlorn looking being at that time ; 
worn out, wounded, and half starved. 

As soon as I finished eating, I mounted my old mule 
and rode into Yazoo City. Here I telegraphed General 
Johnston the news, and the conditions of the surrender 
of Vicksburg, and my safe arrival in Yazoo City. I 
received a telegraphic order from him to take charge of 
all the straggling forces, and all the public property of 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 203 

the Confederate States, in and around this vicinity, and 
bring all to Canton. I got a good large sorrel mule 
from Judge C. L. DuBuisson, and got all the govern- 
ment property out of the city and well on the road to 
Canton, with a guard of something over three hundred 
men belonging to various commands. Our camp was 
out at the Know Nothing Spring, on the plank road 
toward Benton, and about six miles east of Yazoo City. 
In this camp I organized a battalion, and placed a guard 
in Yazoo City ; and none too soon, for the gunboats and 
the Yanks were almost in sight, and came swarming up 
the river to Yazoo City by thousands. They landed 
troops of negro cavalry and proceeded to raid the coun- 
try. I laid my plans accordingly, and sent my wagon 
trains under escort to Canton, built a pontoon bridge of 
fence rails across Big Black, at Moore's Ferry, and got 
everything ready for a retreat. After everything was 
propitious, I had a running fight with them on the plank 
road between Yazoo City and the Know Nothing 
Springs, led them into ambush and let very few of the 
negroes escape. Just east of " The Ponds " on the 
north side of the road, we buried thirty-two of them, and 
from about three miles this side of Yazoo City, to the 
" Ponds," they left most of their number. 

After this skirmish, we retreated to Canton. Beyond 
Canton, across Bear Creek, I again had a skirmish with 
the Yankee cavalry and drove them back. I did not 
not do much rifle or pistol work in either of these en- 
gagements, as I was in command and had to take care 
of everything. I crossed my wagon trains over Pearl 
River, at Ratchff^'s Ferry, and got them beyond Jack- 
son, in the direction of Enterprise, and then reported 
to General Johnston in person. 

I spent several days in Jackson, and received a severe 
wound through my left lung on the 16th of July, and 
was sent to the hospital at Selma, Ala. I was delirious 
when I reached there, and in a very feeble condition, and 
have no remembrance of my journey or arrival at that 
point. A high fever set in from my exhausted condi' 
tion, and very little care was given me, until nature 
began to assert her powers and I rallied and demanded 



204 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

more and better treatment. Neither the hospital attend- 
ants nor the surgeons knew my name. I was only a sick 
and wounded soldier. When Drs. Tuttle, Mellon and 
Cabell found out who I was, no man on this earth ever 
received better or closer attention that I did. 

About the last of August, or the first days of Sep- 
tember, 1863, I was carried to the hospitable home of 
Judge DuBose, not far from Faunsdale station, between 
Selma and Demopolis, and here, under the gentle minis- 
trations and kind nursing of Mrs. DuBose and Misses 
Gussie and Rose, I was soon myself again. 

From the home of Judge DuBose, I was ordered to 
report to General Bragg at Chickamauga, and to join 
General Longstreet, who was then on his way to rein- 
force General Bragg at Chickamauga. I reached that 
point on the 16th of September, with a full major's 
commission. 



CHAPTER XVI 

Battle of Chickamauga — I make frequent raids — My first 
spree — Battle of Missionary Ridge. 

I WAS now again a Confederate soldier, and a commis- 
sioned field officer in the regular army of the Confed- 
erate States, for life and not for the war alone. 

On the 18th of September I went into the battle of 
Chickamauga a staff officer, without my rifle, and I felt 
like a fish out of water. I was sent out to the extreme left 
wing of our army in that great battle, and led a small 
squad of cavalry in the rear of the Yanks, dismounted, 
and opened fire into their ranks, and doubled them back 
on their main line toward their center. I tried to prac- 
tice Jackson's tactics, as he did at Chancellorsville, 
to the best of my ability, without orders, as I had none. 
Our little squad did some heavy flanking and fighting, 
for two days, which our Yankee friends will long re- 
member. I was disabled by a shot, near the close of the 
second day's fight, and sent to the hospital at Atlanta. 

On the 10th of October I again reported for duty, and 
was sent by General Bragg to Gen. P. D. Roddey, at 
Tuscumbia, Ala. Upon my arrival, I was put in com- 
mand of the post at that place. Here I remained until 
we were ordered to Missionary Ridge, just before the 
battle of that name. 

While at Tuscumbia I made frequent raids in the 
direction of luka. Miss., as far north as Columbia, 
Tenn., and in around Pulaski, Tenn., and other points, 
capturing many prisoners and destroying Yankee sup- 
plies. 

On one occasion I was ordered to make a raid in the 
direction of luka, to see what the Yanks were doing. 
It was a cold, bleak, drizzly day, and as I approached 
the road leading from luka to Eastport, my scouts 

205 



206 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

reported a heavy body of Yankee troops moving in the 
direction of Eastport. I got within half a mile of the 
road, and dismounting half of my men, I left the others 
with the horses, and taking one hundred and fifty dis- 
mounted men I marched them up to within three hundred 
yards of the road, and placed them in a clump of pine 
and small black-jack bushes, facing the Bear Creek 
road, with their right flank at right angles to the luka 
and Eastport road. Here I left them in command of 
the senior captain with orders to remain in concealment 
until my return. I then buttoned my own coat, which 
was a Yankee one dyed a dark hue, and having on a 
Yankee cavalryman's hat, spurs, bridle and saddle and 
a horse branded U. S. A., I made a very fair Yankee. 
Taking a large wagon whip, I rode down to the Yankee 
lines. 

As I struck the Eastport road, the whole column was 
halted, as some of the artillery was stalled or mired in 
the mud in front. Just at the point, ready to turn out 
into the Bear Creek road, stood a large surgeons' wagon, 
filled with all the necessary instruments and drugs, and 
drawn by four tremendous Norman horses. I spoke 
sharply to the driver and told him the doctor wanted 
that wagon at the front at once and to follow me, as the 
artillery was stalled in front and if he waited he would 
not reach Eastport before midnight. He obeyed at 
once, and all the wagons, sutler's stores and many 
straggling Yankees followed. I rode at their head until 
I passed my dismounted men, then I changed sides and 
slowly dropped back until I came in sight of the mounted 
men and loose horses. I found them in line of battle. 
I was just opposite one of the sutler's wagons, when I 
saw my dismounted men close in behind. At the same 
time a little clerk in the wagon caught a glimpse of the 
starry cross banner glittering in the ranks of my 
mounted men. 

He leaned out of the wagon, and looked at me and 
exclaimed : " We are off to the Confederacy, by God, 
sir!" 

" You are mighty right, young man," I answered. 

I hurried the wagons up, and told the stragglers to 



. MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 207 

climb in and not try to get away ; if they did not obey 
I'd kill them all. I never saw men more obedient. My 
men were soon mounted and we put everything in a trot 
and drove with all speed back to Tuscumbia and never 
fired a gun. I had twenty-nine wagons, a doctor's com- 
plete outfit, seven large sutler's shop wagons and fifty- 
one prisoners. The wagons contained quartermaster 
and commissary stores that we were badly in need of. 

The sutler's stores were a real godsend, as there were 
quantities of calicoes, domestics, pins, needles, hairpins, 
ladies' hose, shoes, boots, etc. And in the stores I found 
seven baskets of champagne, a great deal of quinine and 
other much needed medicines. Among the quartermas- 
ter's stores was a large supply of cavalry boots, shoes 
and men's wear. I kept a fine pair of boots and took 
several bolts of calico, domestics, hose, gloves, pins, 
needles, thread, hairpins and so on, for distribution 
among my lady friends, and took charge of three bas- 
kets of champagne and a pair of gold spurs presented 
by the ladies of New York to Gen. Morgan L. Smith. 

The little sutler's clerk who had waved his hat and 
exclaimed, " Off for the Confederacy," I paroled, and 
sent an escort with him into his own lines and told him 
to go back home to his mother, and to stay there, and 
not come South again until after the war was over. I 
gave him a note to hand to General Dodge, commander 
of the left wing of the 16th Army Corps, thanking him 
for the liberal donation of so many wagon loads of army 
supplies, stores, and medicines for our needy hospitals, 
that he had delivered into my hands so generously, with- 
out my having to lose a man, fire a gun, or pay a cent. I 
sent one basket of the champagne to Miss Ella Winston, 
and one to Miss Kate Armistead, both cousins of mine, 
living near Tuscumbia. I kept one basket at my head- 
quarters, and sent the rest to the hospital. I also sent 
cousins Ella and Kate a donation of ladies' shoes, gloves, 
domestics, calicoes, thread, pins, needles, and other 
etceteras for themselves and the other lady members of 
their families. 

The next day, I received a card of thanks from each, 
and two negroes brought a great tray loaded with the 



208 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

choicest viands — a roast turkey, baked and fried 
chickens, butter, bread, jeHies, celery, cakes, and other 
good things. I received their donations with thanks. I 
sent my servant to Dr. Abernathy's and borrowed from 
Mrs. Abemathy chairs, napkins, goblets and a table 
cloth, and also some knives, forks, and spoons. I sent 
invitations to Dr. Dan German, and four of the officers 
who were with me in the expedition, to come at three 
o'clock that evening and dine with me at headquarters. 
I had the table elaborately decorated, and waited for my 
guests. Only one came, and that was Dr. German. The 
others all being " on duty," could not attend. 

We sat long at the table and enjoyed the rich feast, 
sent by our fair friends, and when we were fully satis- 
fied, at Dr. German's request, my servant opened a bottle 
of champagne. I had never in my life tasted any kind 
of intoxicating liquors ; no kind had ever passed my lips. 
Our glasses were filled, and the doctor drank his with the 
true enjoyment of a bon vivant; I tasted mine, and al- 
though it had a sweet, fiery, pungent flavor, it was not 
bad to the taste. Again and again I filled my goblet, 
and kept up with the doctor, until two whole bottles had 
been emptied by me, and two by the doctor. Then the 
chairs, table and the walls and ceiling of the room began 
to spin around, and my glass would not set upright on 
the table but insisted on turning over; I drove it, with 
considerable force, down upon the table to make it stick 
and it suddenly disappeared, as if by magic, or the ghost 
of a dream. I, myself, seemed also to disappear and 
the doctor, too, went into the land of invisibility in a 
whirling, shadowy form. Everything grew dark, but 
the gyrations and twisting motions kept going unceas- 
ingly, until I was spun out into a seemingly fine thread 
of gossamer and lost in infinity — floated away on the 
subtle fumes of the treacherous sparkling wine. 

The sunlight was streaming in from the wrong side 
of the room when I came to. Chairs, table, ceiling, 
and all things visible were still in a whirl, and a 
pain was throbbing and scooting through my brain as 
if my old head had been pounded with a sledge hammer, 
or pierced with a Yankee bullet. My leg was fast above 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 209 

my head, my spur driven through the bottom of a chair, 
and it was as immovable as a ton of lead. On the oppo- 
site side of the table, still whirling round, though pale, 
stark and stiff as an iron poker, lay the doctor. I could 
hear the rattle of dishes and the stir of my servants in 
the kitchen. I tried to speak, but my tongue was way 
down in my throat, and was glued to it. I tried to shift 
my position and turn over, but I was numb and seem- 
ingly dead. 

I concluded that there had been a sudden raid into the 
town by the Yankees, and that the doctor had been killed 
and I shot through the head and paralyzed. I tried to 
move my leg, and lift it out of the chair, but I was abso- 
lutely unable to control a single muscle of it. I could 
hear my negro grinding the coffee, smell the meat fry- 
ing and hear it sizzling in the frying-pan. I made effort 
after effort to speak, but only a gurgling sound could 
I produce. At last, as I became more sane I got my 
voice, and as I called my negro, my voice seemed to come 
from a great distance and had a deep, sepulchral cadence 
and was very indistinct. When he came in sight he, 
too, was spinning round and going through various 
gyratory motions that were very annoying to me. I 
ordered him to stop, and stand still so I could look at 
him. I asked him how many had been killed in the fight 
when we were surprised by the Yankees. He said that 
there had been no fight, and no one killed. I knew he 
was telling me a lie, for I could see with my own eyes 
that the doctor was dead, and I knew that I had been 
shot through the head, and couldn't move hand or foot. 

My negro went back to his cooking, and soon I could 
hear him singing, " We'll anchor by and by," and it 
made me feel that I was anchored, without waiting for 
the " by and by." I called him again and asked how 
many were killed. He came, and in very positive tones 
he said : " No, Massa, 'taint been no fight ; 'tain't no one 
kilt; Dr. German ain't dead, and you ain't hurt; it's jist 
dat air shampain what you and he dun drinked." 

I lay still, for I had to, and tried to gather my still 
whirling thoughts together, and the more I tried to think 
the less progress I made. Finally I had a rift of reason, 



210 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

and it came like a flash. I was drunk, champagne 
drunk at that. I was lifted to my cot and for a whole 
week I laid, as it were, in a drunken stupor, and when I 
tried to raise my head in bed, I would get still drunker. 
And now, looking back over a lapse of forty odd years, 
I can truthfully say that that drunken spree has been 
enough experience in that line to last me through life. 
Nor can I to this distant day conceive how anyone, 
after passing through the pangs of a champagne 
drunk, could ever wish, voluntarily, to indulge in 
another. 

As soon as I got over my spree I was ordered to re- 
port to General Bragg, at Missionary Ridge, near Chat- 
tanooga, Tenn. I found our army in position on the 
ridge, with our lines extending to and including Look- 
out Mountain. On the latter we had a signal station. I 
rode up on this mountain, and had a magnificent view 
of the whole surrounding country. 

Chattanooga and the entire Yankee s^rmy lay at my 
feet. Grant and his lieutenants had thoroughly re- 
cuperated it, since Bragg's inertness had permitted them 
to do, after their defeat at Chickamauga. Why Bragg 
let them lie unmolested in Chattanooga so long after 
Chickamauga, I have never been able to comprehend. 
I have always thought that we should have driven them 
out of Tennessee without halting, while the veterans of 
Longstreet were with him. We could have cut off and 
destroyed his long, thin line of communication and cap- 
tured his legions in detail. If only Stonewall Jackson 
had been in his place, a different tale would have been 
told to the coming generations. Grant had no real safe 
base of supplies, and what he did have would have been 
in Jackson's hands and destroyed, and Grant's army 
would have been a thing of the past in less than a week. 

At the battle of Missionary Ridge, I was near Bragg's 
headquarters, to the right of our center, about a hun- 
dred and fifty yards, as we faced Chattanooga, and 
could see the city and the river. On the morning of the 
battle a heavy mist obscured the mountains and valleys ; 
Lookout was entirely hidden. I could hear the distant 
rattle of musketry skirmishing, far away in the direction 



. MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 211 

of the mist-shrouded crest of Lookout Mountain, but 
everything was hidden from my vision. As the fog 
hfted from the fields in front, I could see long lines of 
skirmishers leaving their rifle pits, that extended from 
Missionary Ridge to Lookout Mountain, and coming 
toward us. While watching them, a fierce firing began 
on our right, and I saw long dense lines of bluecoats, 
extending from the river on our right wing to as far as 
my eye could reach on our left. 

I was sent to General Hardee by Bragg, and as I rode 
up and reported for duty, Sherman's whole corps made 
a charge on our skirmish line and drove out the skir- 
mishers by overwhelming numbers alone. Then they 
made a charge and attempted to reach our breastworks. 
The fighting here was desperate in the extreme. We met 
them with a perfect storm of grape and canister, and a 
deadly rifle fire; time after time they rallied and came 
again, until the whole mountain side was blue with their 
dead bodies, and the gulHes ran streams of blood. 

Later in the day after carrying several dispatches to 
and from Generals Bragg and Hardee, while resting be- 
hind a breastwork near some tall poplar trees, I asked 
permission to use my rifle. It being granted, I brought 
it into play and did some good execution among the 
mounted Yankee officers. 

Our part of the line was victorious, and we drove 
Sherman from off^ the field and back to the Tennessee 
River, and we occupied the battle ground. Our lines 
rested and cooked their suppers, and I, with many of 
the men, was fast asleep, when we were aroused and told 
to fall in, as our army had been defeated, and the greater 
part of Breckinridge's corps destroyed. Many would 
not believe the rumor, and much confusion ensued as we 
were hurried through the darkness in the direction of 
Chickamauga. We marched the whole night, we knew 
not where, not seeing or hearing an enemy on either 
hand. Daylight found us still retreating, and everyone 
very much exhausted and worn out. 

We halted at last, and kindled fires, and prepared 
coff^ee. I rode among the men as they were resting, and 
I never before saw as disheveled, disordered, and dis- 



212 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

heartened a set of men in my life. I was perfectly dis- 
gusted. 

The next morning I met General Bragg, and asked if 
I could return to Tuscumbia. He assented and gave the 
necessary orders. With my servant, George, I at once 
set out on my return by way of Rome, Ga., and Gads- 
den, Ala., and reached my old headquarters at Tus- 
cumbia, Ala., without any delays. 

A few days after I was ordered by Gen. N. B. Forrest 
on a scout with twenty-one men, toward Murfrees- 
boro, with orders to tap the railroad at some point, 
and blow up a down train loaded with supplies. The 
journey was a long and dangerous one, through a coun- 
try filled with renegades and cut-throats. I selected my 
men principally from the Fourth Alabama, and only 
took young unmarried men, who volunteered willingly, 
and unhesitatingly. I carried on mules nine large cap- 
torpedoes to place under the rails, to be exploded by 
pressure or from a small electric battery, which I had 
given a thorough test before I started by firing several 
blank cartridges, at the distance of half a mile from the 
battery. I had a good telegraph operator with me, and 
I put him in charge of electric appliances. 

We arrived at our destination, in Rutherford County, 
on the railroad from Nashville to Chattanooga, just at 
daylight one morning, without having any serious de- 
lays or having to make any great detours from the 
original line mapped out for our journey. We cap- 
tured the guard in the tunnel, without firing a gun, as 
they were so far in the enemy's lines, and surrounded 
by a friendly community, that they were careless and, 
off guard. I compelled the operator at the tunnel, by 
threats of death, to give my operator his code and sig- 
nals. I placed my torpedoes where they could do the 
most damage to the tunnel, and then dressing my men 
in the uniforms of the Yankee guards, I put the battery 
in position, and awaited the train's arrival. 

The telegrapher gave warning of the approach of an 
" up " train, loaded with Missouri Yankee troops, going 
home on furlough, and to tell of their victory at Mis- 
sionary Ridge. My orders were to destroy a down and 



. MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 213 

not an up train, but I did not hesitate to disobey this 
order, as I thought a train load of live Yankees, put out 
of business forever, would do the Confederacy more 
good than a train load of army rations. So when the 
entire train was well in the tunnel I sent the fatal spark 
on its mission, and buried the whole under a crushing 
mass of clay and stone. I waited until the last fumes 
of steam and powder smoke escaped from the awful 
wreck, and then with my nine prisoners I began my 
retreat. 



CHAPTER XVII 

Receive orders from General Forrest — Am captured by 
Col. C. W. Gaines — The Dutch jailer — Offered freedom 
— Am forwarded to Louisville — My escape — Am ordered 
to report to General Stuart in Virginia — My journey to 
Virginia. 

We had to make some long and hard rides to escape 
the numerous bodies of cavalry that were soon following 
in our tracks, as we were in a regular hotbed of Union 
renegades, and every man's hand was against us. My 
Yankee captives were mounted on the mules that had 
borne the torpedoes, and they were not anxious to keep 
up with us, but rather retarded our progress. I held 
onto them until I crossed the Tennessee line, not far 
below Pulaski, and here one dark night, in a dense strip 
of woodland, I halted and built a fire, as it was intensely 
cold, and paroled every man, and gave him a mule to 
ride. Each gave his word of honor that he would not 
tell which way we had gone. 

I left them at the camp-fire about midnight, and about 
daylight on the morning of the 14th of December we 
were on Hurricane Creek. As we halted, we sent a 
picket out behind us, and were just preparing to get a 
cup of coff*ee and broil some bacon, when our pickets 
fired their guns and were in our midst with a regiment 
of Illinois cavalry at their heels. I ordered the men to 
escape into the fallen timber and scatter and cross the 
river wherever they could. We met the Yanks with a 
feeble fire, and I was shot through the thigh and re- 
ceived a serious wound in the knee of the right leg. I 
and four of my men were captured by Col. G. W. Gaines, 
of the 9th Illinois Cavalry. My men were all scattered 
in the fallen timber, and save the four who were with me, 
all escaped. 

My wounds knocked me senseless and my knee was 
very painful. When I came to my horse had been killed 
and I had been a prisoner some moments before I was 

214 



. MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 215 

aware of it, I was carried at once to Pulaski, escorted 
by a Captain Pickett of the 9th lUinois Cavalry. At 
Pulaski I was turned over to the provost guard and 
escorted to Columbia, Tennessee. Here I was confined 
in the inner cell of the jail; and here, sore, weak, tired 
and wounded, I lay all night on the stone floor, very 
cold and without a blanket even. There were several 
inches of snow on the outside. 

The next morning I was taken out into the hall of the 
building and carefully searched by a large, red-faced 
jailer, named Truitt. He was a big, rough, fat, cruel- 
looking specimen of humanity, and just fitted my idea 
of what a Yankee prison-keeper should be. Soon after 
he had finished his search, a tall, red-headed Dutch 
captain, with bleared eyes, came in, and held a consulta- 
tion with my jailer. My Dutch captain was as beastly 
a specimen as I had ever looked at. He wanted to know 
if I had been searched ; and Truitt told him I had been. 

Upon my left-hand fourth finger I wore my mother's 
wedding ring, placed there by her own sainted fingers 
only a few hours before her death, with a request that I 
give it to the companion I should choose to be my help- 
mate through life. In my undershirt, just under the 
left arm pit, in a specially constructed pocket, I always 
wore a small miniature of my mother, in a round gutta 
percha case, about as large as a dollar; I had had it 
made long years before and it and her ring were my 
talismans, and I held them as very sacred treasures. This 
Dutchman saw the ring and ordered me to pull it off 
and give it to him. I refused and he caught my hand. 
I bent my finger but he was too strong for me and tore 
it off. In the struggle he felt the gutta percha locket, 
and thought it was a watch. He ordered me to pull it 
out. I again refused, and he drew his knife and was 
about to cut a hole through my clothing and take it 
by force when I told him I would get it out. I steadied 
myself on my crutch, and taking the picture out, I 
dropped it on the stone floor, and ground it under my 
heel, saying as I did so, " No damned Yankee looks at 
that." He stepped back, drew a small Smith & Wesson 
pistol, and fired a shot that entered my left side, glanced 



^16 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

a rib, and passed out, making a small flesh wound. I 
told him he was a damned coward, and that some day 
I would yet meet him and have a settlement, even if 
it was in another world. Truitt and the guard inter- 
posed and I was carried out and put on the train for 
Nashville. 

Before going on with this trip, I will remark that 
in October, 1866, I had the exquisite pleasure of meet- 
ing this Dutch captain in a canebrake on Steel's Bayou, 
between Deer Creek and the Mississippi River, in Is- 
saquena County, Miss. I asked him for my ring and 
he told me that he gave it to a " woman of the town," 
in Detroit, Mich., and did not know what she had done 
with it, as he had never heard from her since. I left 
his bones to bleach, unburied, in that same canebrake. 

As I was removed from the prison to the cars to 
Nashville, every fiber of my frame was smarting with 
indignation ; a demon of revenge possessed my soul and 
I was almost a maniac. I was carried at once to the 
penitentiary and placed in cell No. 3. Here I laid for 
several days in a kind of torpor. I tore up one of my 
shirts, made bandages of it and dressed my wounds 
as best I could. My food was pea soup, pickled fat 
pork, and a coarse, sour kind of bread, and miserable 
tasting water. A large wooden vessel was used as a 
sink. 

My cell was about four feet wide, and about eight 
feet long. I could sit on my iron cot with only its 
coarse gray blanket, and rest my feet against the op- 
posite wall, as I often did. A guard paced his beat 
constantly in front of my door; I could hear his steady 
tramp and soon became accustomed to it. The stench 
from my wooden sink was almost unbearable, and each 
day as I endured it I became more and more filled with 
venom and hatred. The act of my Dutch captain at 
Columbia had maddened me, and I was more like a beast 
than a man. Each day I nursed my wrath and it 
intensified. I blamed myself for not trying to crush 
his skull with my crutch at the moment he did me such 
an injury. 

One day, while these thoughts were seething through 



. MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 217 

my brain, the door of my cell was thrown open and 
an old, gentlemanly looking man, wearing a tall silk 
hat and a high standing collar, accompanied by General 
Dodge and several other officers, presented themselves 
at my door; but as it swung open the awful stench 
drove them back, as my sink had not been emptied since 
my arrival. In a few moments two soldiers entered and 
carried it out, then returned and sprinkled chloride of 
lime all over the cell floor and closed the door. The 
fumes of the hme almost suffocated me. I laid back 
on my cot, and I know that if my words and thoughts 
had had the power to do so the whole Yankee nation 
would have been assigned to the bottomless pit. 

In about an hour the old man returned; the door 
was left open and the officers stood on the outside, but 
he entered. He spoke in a mild and kindly tone, and 
said: 

" Good morning, my young friend. I have come 
to offer you your freedom; yes, to give it to you." 

I arose and thanked him, and said that I was very 
glad, as this was a horrible place in which to keep a 
human being. 

He took off his hat, drew some papers from it and 
in rather pompous tone said, " Our great and glorious 
President, in the goodness of his heart, has seen fit 
to issue an amnesty to all repentant rebels. Now all 
you have to do is to sign these documents before me, 
and we will send you north of the Ohio River and take 
good care of you until the end of this cruel war." 

As his meaning dawned upon me while he was re- 
peating this formula, I never was angrier in my life. 

I asked, " Is that the oath of allegiance to the 
Yankee government you want me to take ? " 

" Yes," he rephed. 

As mad as a hornet, I said, " Well, sir, when I die, 
I want my winding sheet made out of Yankee scalps 
and I want the fun of killing them myself." 

I drew myself back and gathered up my crutches, and 
as I did so the old man jumped back and out of the 
door, as if I had struck at him. My cell door was 
slammed to and I heard the oflicers on the outside 



218 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

laugh heartily. I laid back on my cot madder than 
ever at this new insult offered me by the old man, whom 
I learned was a Judge Campbell. I felt exhausted and 
every muscle in my body ached. I studied how I could 
escape this life, and how I could best avenge myself. 

As I thus lay, my cell was again opened and a polite 
sergeant said General Dodge wanted to see me. I 
arose and followed him. We got into an ambulance 
and drove to the capitol. Here I received a good bath, 
shave, hair cut, and shampoo. My wounds were dressed, 
clean underclothes and a citizen's suit with the excep- 
tion of a coat furnished me, and I was driven in a hack 
up to General Dodge's headquarters. Here I was in- 
troduced to General Dodge and a number of officers, 
and we had a splendid dinner. I was asked a good 
many questions, but I was on my guard in a moment, 
and soon they all saw that I was too sharp to be caught 
in any trap set for me, so after a while they desisted. 
After a good cigar, which I really enjoyed. General 
Dodge gave me a letter addressed to "The Command- 
ant of U. S. Alilitary Prisons," and also one addressed 
to the chief surgeon in charge of the Broadway prison 
hospital, Louisville, Ky. He told me that I would be 
forwarded to Louisville that night, but that I could 
stay at his headquarters, on parole, until time to take 
the train, which I did. He handed me several late 
papers, and I took a seat in a large arm rocking chair, 
with a soft cushioned seat, and in a few minutes I was 
sound asleep. A Captain Pratt, a Kentuckian by birth, 
roused me from my slumbers, and went with me to the 
train, and saw me aboard and in charge of the guard. 

We reached Louisville about daylight, and I was 
placed in the Broadway prison hospital, under charge 
of a Dr. Dalrymple, who told me his residence was 202 
Hudson street, New York. He was a great big, fat, 
jolly, kindhearted man, with a touch as gentle and 
soft as that of a woman. He was soon interested in 
my wounds, and dressed them with his own hands. He 
informed me that General Dodge was an intimate friend 
of his and that he would take good care of me, and 
see that I had the best of treatment while in his hands. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 219 

I was given a nice room, all to myself, and I was 
well cared for in reality. Many Southern as well as 
Yankee women called on me, and one evening my kins- 
woman, Mrs. Z. P. Zanone, accompanied by Miss Annie 
Fontaine and others, whose names I cannot recall, came 
to see me. They brought me some nice cigars, canned 
strawberries, pineapples, lemon sherbet, cakes, and other 
delicacies, and I ate as long as I could swallow. 

That night I was taken with cholera morbus and ter- 
rible cramps, and about two o'clock in the morning I 
put on my citizen's overcoat and went out to the large 
main prison sink. There was a separate hospital sink, 
and one common one, divided by a wall of plank, for 
the Federal and Confederate general prisoners ; and it 
was to this general sink that I made my way. It was 
about thirty feet long, and had a flattened pole to stand 
upon ; it was some ten or fifteen feet deep, and half 
filled all the time with quicklime, copperas and other dis- 
infectants. I stopped at the end, and while on the 
pole, grasping the corner post and in terrible agony, 
the main prison sergeant, another great brute of a 
Dutchman, entered at a small side gate from the street. 
Leaving it partly open, he came in a rush to my 
corner position. As he saw me bending over he raised 
his foot and kicked at me, just grazing my chin and 
nearly sending me into the pit below. I arose at once ; 
all pain was gone in an instant. I stepped aside, boil- 
ing with anger, and he took my place. I fastened up 
my clothing, and as he bent his head forward, I drew 
back my crutch, spear fashion, and sent the iron heel 
straight at his neck, striking him just under the chin 
with all the force I could exert. He fell backwards, 
head foremost, into the pit of quicklime, and sank 
like a rock. I bent over to give him a finishing blow, 
but only the bottoms of his boots ever came to the sur- 
face ; I gave them an extra tap, and sent them back 
out of sight. 

The snow was about six inches deep and a cold north 
wind blowing. I went out at the gate the Yankee had 
left open, and walked straight down toward the river. 
I struck a road or pike running parallel with it, and 



220 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

down this I turned. I followed it for about ten miles, 
walking very rapidly to keep from freezing. I met 
several market wagons, but merely bowed to the occu- 
pants and walked on. About eight o'clock I came to 
a small thicket of bushes ; this I entered and left my 
gray uniform coat, and only retained my light citi- 
zen's overcoat, given me by General Dodge. Being 
now in full citizen's dress, I felt much safer in meeting 
people, as I was on my crutches, and did not attract 
much attention. About a mile from where I hid my 
coat I came in sight of an old-fashioned Southern 
homestead, with negro quarters and outhouses. As I 
neared it I saw a young boy come out of the gate, put 
his foot up on the horse block and adjust his skates. 
I walked up and said, " Your folks are good Union 
people, aren't they, son ? " 

He looked up quickly. " No," he said, " my mamma 
is a good reb, but my papa don't say much." 

I opened the gate and walked into the yard, straight 
up to the front of the house, and up the steps onto the 
porch. I saw through the side lights a negro woman 
go out through the back door. I only saw her back 
as she passed out and shut the door. I walked right 
into the hall without knocking, and as I entered I met 
an elegant lady — tall, dignified and graceful. 

She looked me over, and said, " Why did you not 
knock, sir, before entering my door.-^ " 

I answered, " I did not wish to attract the attention 
of the servant who was just passing out the back door, 
as I am an escaped Confederate soldier, and came here 
for help to get back to Dixie." 

She gave me a sharp look, as if to pierce the inmost 
fiber of my soul, " And what made you think that I 
would aid a reb to escape, sir.? " 

" I gathered as much from a short conversation with 
your little son, whom I met a few moments ago at your 
front gate." 

" Come this way, sir ; walls have ears." 

We ascended a stairway into an attic, and here she 
told me to stay and keep quiet. Not long after I 
heard her coming back, and with her was a young lady 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 221 

about sixteen years old ; they brought me an elegant 
breakfast, and she told me her husband was away from 
home, but would return some time that evening. I told 
her that I had escaped from the Louisville prison hos- 
pital on Broadway, and if caught I would be shot or 
hung ; that I must get away as soon as possible. 

Soon after the noon hour, I heard her again ascend- 
ing the stairway, and with her came her daughter. They 
brought me an elegant lunch and I enjoyed it. They 
spent but a few minutes with me in conversation after 
I had my meal, for fear that their absence would at- 
tract the attention of the servants down stairs. 

Some time after dark I heard heavy steps ascending 
the stairway, and an elderly gentleman entered and 
shook hands with me. He remarked that his wife had 
informed him that I was an escaped prisoner from the 
Broadway prison in Louisville. I told him that I was. 
And then I gave him an exact account of my escape and 
the death of the Yankee Dutch sergeant. I wanted him 
to see clearly the danger that I was in, as I believed him 
to be a true Southern man, and would do all in his power 
to aid me in escaping, especially when the peril I was 
in was so great. He asked what I would need. I told 
him a good horse, a few dollars, and a pistol. Then 
he gave me a splendid new Colt's 45-calibre pistol, about 
fifty dollars, and told me that a good horse was hitched 
at the front gate at my disposal; that I could mount 
at any time that suited my pleasure. He told me the 
route that I had better take to avoid the Yankee camps, 
and a minute description of the country. I arose at 
once, and said that I thought the sooner I started the 
better. 

We descended, and as we were passing through the 
hall his wife came out of her room and placed a large, 
heavy chinchilla overcoat on my shoulders, and told me 
that it would keep me as warm as a blanket. I thanked 
her, and she aided me in putting it on. I then bade 
them good-bye and passed out of the gate. I told them 
my name just as the door was closing behind me, and 
asked for a pencil and paper and wrote it down and 
said that if it was ever in my power I would aid them, 



222 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

or any of their family. Long years had elapsed when 
their son, Dr. W. A. Alsop, became my family physician 
in the Yazoo Valley, at Shaw, in Bolivar County, Miss. 
The air was bitter cold, and as I mounted my horse 
he was shivering. I took the first pike or road leading 
southward and away from the river. I rode steadily 
all night, and as day began to dawn I went into a dense 
wooded place between two hills, and rode a mile or so 
away from the pike. Here I spent the day. As soon as 
it was night I turned into the first barn near the pike, 
and seeing a negro, I asked where I could get some corn 
and oats for my horse, and how far it was to where a 
traveler could stay all night. He let me have corn and 
oats for my horse and told me that down the pike about 
a mile I could get lodging and something to eat. 

As soon as my horse had finished his meal I mounted 
and rode steadily until daylight. I would examine the 
sign posts along the road and could tell pretty well 
where I was, and the direction I wished to go. 

My daily and nightly program was about the same 
for two weeks, and I only had to use my pistol four 
times to avoid capture. I exchanged horses twice on 
the road, but never with the owner's consent, relying 
solely on my judgment and knowledge. I fared very 
well, generally through the aid of negroes, and often 
from the kindness of Southern ladies. The ladies 
would fill my haversack bountifully and give me all the 
information they possessed regarding the positions oc- 
cupied by the Yanks in my line of travel. Thus I was 
enabled to avoid many dangers, and to know to whom 
to apply for aid. 

At the beginning of the third week of my journey, 
I rode into our picket lines near Decatur, Alabama, and 
met several of the 53rd Alabama Cavalry. I reported 
my arrival by telegraph, and was ordered to report for 
duty to General J. E. B. Stuart, in Virginia. 

My liberty was of but short duration. I was riding 
with a small escort about fifteen miles north of Florence, 
Alabama, when we were ambushed and fired into by a 
band of renegade Tennesseeans. I was knocked from 
my horse and wounded in the thigh and knee, and two 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 223 

of my men were killed and several others wounded. I 
never even got a glimpse of the villains. I was carried 
to Dr. Mitchell's in Florence, and for two weeks I was 
carefully nursed by the doctor and his family. Why 
the renegades did not take me prisoner or kill me I 
have never been able to learn. 

As soon as I was able to travel I started on my 
journey to Virginia, and after a three days' journey 
from the doctor's I rode right into a whole regiment 
of Yankees. My horse was shot and killed and I was 
again captured. This time I was not halted at any 
prison until I reached McLean's Barracks, in Cincin- 
nati, Ohio. From there I was sent to Johnson's Island 
prison, near Sandusky City on Lake Erie. Here I only 
remained twenty-four hours. I was forwarded back 
to Columbus, Ohio, and sent out to Camp Chase, about 
four miles in the country, from the city. Here I met 
many of my old comrades in arms, and there were daily 
accessions to our ranks. 

All branches of the service were here represented, 
cavalry, infantry and artillery, as well as the navy of 
the C. S. A. Many citizens were prisoners here, and 
not even women were spared. 

I set to work at once to plan a way of escape. I laid 
out an elaborate tunnel from the inside of our room, 
and we dug it ; but the prison had detectives in our 
midst, who passed as Confederate soldiers, and they 
betrayed us, and only three out of the eighteen engaged 
in the work escaped. Our rations were horrible: pea 
soup water, pickled salt pork, which was very thick and 
fat, and a sour, coarse, prison bread. 

While I was there I got a written permit from Sancho, 
the prison provost, countersigned by Colonel Moody, 
the post commander, to make and use a bow and arrow 
with which to shoot rats. After I made my bow and 
arrow, our mess had plenty of fresh meat, and occa- 
sionally we would make a sale of our surplus rats to 
some other mess not so fortunate as we. My way of 
hunting was to buy a soup bone of fresh beef, that had 
been used by the sutler or some other outside party ; 
take this bone and place it in the snow just outside of 



224 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

our door, and leave a small crack so that I could peep 
through and watch a rat as he came to take a nibble ; 
and while he was gnawing it I would send an arrow 
through him and draw him inside, and one of the boys 
would take charge, and skin and clean and prepare him 
for our camp kettle. We would buy rice, pepper and salt, 
from the sutler, and cook it and our rats together, mak- 
ing an elegant rat and rice pUlau. It was a very pal- 
atable dish, and I can assure you that we all enjoyed 
it, as the rat closely resembles the squirrel, and any 
old hunter will tell you that the sweetest meat known 
to the hunter is a nice, young, tender squirrel, either 
broiled or barbecued. 

While in Camp Chase, our mess edited a weekly news- 
paper, called " The Rebel Sixty-Four Pounder, or Camp 
Chase Vindicator." It was all written in small columns 
on four pages of large foolscap paper ; eight columns 
in all. Each copy was beautifully illustrated by our 
special artist. One column was devoted to poetry and 
one to " grapevine" telegrams from Dixie. Everything 
was original, and we had no " exchanges." Colonel 
W. S. Hawkins, of Tennessee, and myself kept up the 
" poet's column." Captain Moody, of Port Gibson, 
Miss., a brother of the prison commandant, and Cap- 
tain Thomas F. Perkins, Major G. Hamp Smith and 
someone else whose name I have forgotten had charge 
of the " locals." Our editorial corps consisted of about 
a dozen as bright minds as you could find in any com- 
munity. Every number we issued, after being read by 
our prison comrades, was sold at twenty-five cents a 
copy on the outside to " souvenir hunters," and the 
Yankee guards became regular subscribers. It was a 
money-making business with them, as they received a 
fancy price for them from visitors. 

We had a fine band, which played on prison-made 
instruments, and we had variety shows and vaudeville 
acting quite often, which did much to relieve the tedium 
of the long, weary days and nights, when the north 
winds howled, and we shivered in our cold, open, wind- 
swept shanties. 

One day, while passing the open doorway that sepa- 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 225 

rated barracks No. 2 from barracks No. 3, I saw a 
young lady in the opposite prison, and Sancho, the 
provost, was with me. I asked if I might speak to her, 
and he told the guard to let me talk to her at the window 
for five or ten minutes. I stepped up and asked if I 
might have a few moments' conversation with her. She 
stopped and looked up at the guard, and he said, " Talk 
to him if you want to. I won't hinder you for a while." 

As she came to the window I stretched my hand 
through, shook hands with her and introduced myself. 

She merely bowed and said, " What do you want with 
me? I don't know you." 

" What have they put you in here for? " 

" Is it any of your business what I am in here for.'' " 

" No, ma'am ; I only had curiosity to know why so 
young and beautiful a lady should be made the inmate 
of a Yankee prison pen." 

" Well, sir, if you are so anxious to know, tell me 
what are you in here for.? " 

" I am in here for killing Yankees." 

" Well," she said, " I'm in here for telegraphing to 
hell to see if there was room there for any more of 
them, and they caught me before I got my answer." 

I turned away and said nothing more, as I had quite 
enough. I asked Sancho if he could tell me the charges 
against her, and he said that they had found her with 
the end of a telegraph wire, that she had cut and stuck 
in the ground, and that it was an actual fact that she 
made the same remark to the officer who captured her, 
somewhere in West Virginia. 

In March, 1864, a trainload of us were put in box 
cars and sent to Fort Delaware. The snow was very 
deep and the cars very cold, and especially did we suf- 
fer when they slowly ascended the winding track that 
led up to Altoona, and again at a place called Lancaster. 
At this latter point an amusing thing occurred. We 
had a captain of a Tennessee regiment — Webster, I 
think his name was — but we called him " Jack of 
Clubs." He was a singular looking man, with very 
long, tawny beard and hair to match, that stood, each 
by itself. His arms were very long and reached almost 



226 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

to his knees ; his forehead projected and seemed to hang 
out over his face, which was rugged and seamed; his 
nose turned up like a pug-nosed bulldog, and you could 
look right into his nostrils; his under jaw was fully 
half an inch longer than the upper, and his teeth were 
always visible. He had a fierce gray blue eye that 
looked straight into yours, but on the whole with a 
genial, kindly expression that won your heart. He was 
a genial, kind-hearted, good fellow, and as brave as a 
lion. You could meet no kindlier comrade, despite his 
peculiar makeup, in any clime. 

He sat beside me as our train rolled into the station 
at Lancaster, Pa. An immense crowd had gathered, 
cold as it was, to catch a ghmpse of the rebel prisoners 
as the train stopped. I had cut nearly through the 
white pine walls of the box car in which I sat a hole 
big enough for me to escape through, if an opportunity 
presented itself, but had not removed the severed boards. 

The sun was shining brightly, and the landscape was 
glittering in its mantle of snow, and the platform of 
the depot was densely packed with women and children 
sightseers, with a fair sprinkling of men. 

My peep-hole was just ready to be shoved out; I 
gave it a push, the boards fell, and I stuck my head in 
the hole and looked out. I was within two feet of a 
boy about fifteen or sixteen years old, and he turned to 
his mother and said, " Mamma, what do the rebs look 
like?" 

She replied, " Hush, my son, they look just like our 
men, only they have on gray uniforms, instead of 
blue." 

This did not satisfy him, and he continued to peep, 
and ask the same questions over and over. " Jack of 
Clubs " pushed me to one side, and just as the boy was 
stooping low and trying to see the whole inside of the 
box car, he rammed his head almost against the boy's 
face, and shaking his bushy long hair and beard at him 
he gave vent to a loud, hoarse lion growl that shook 
the car. The boy gave a tremendous spring back- 
wards, striking his mother fair in the breast and felling 
her like an ox. He went through the crowd like a cata- 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 227 

pult's missile. Such a stampede as took place from 
that platform when Jack's growl and wonderful head 
sent the youth flying through the multitude, was never 
before witnessed, and I would give a good deal to know 
to-day what that boy thought a reb looked like, as Old 
Jack's head and growl broke upon his vision and 
hearing. 

Quite an hour elapsed before the excitement subsided, 
as it was reported that the rebs had made a break for 
liberty and many had escaped. Even the guards could 
not tell what had happened. We were at last mustered, 
the roll of prisoners called and all accounted for. The 
guards were very much frightened, as they were not 
soldiers, and had never heard the hiss of a bullet on 
the field of death. The excitement died down after the 
roll call and our train moved out. 

We passed through a wild, hilly region, with deep 
cuts, and the snow in many places was piled deep, al- 
most touching the sides of the car. Soon after passing 
a small station called " Bird in Hand," I was looking 
out of my hole, and in a dense wooded cut, where the 
snow was deep on each side, I sprang head foremost into 
a snow bank and was buried out of sight. I waited 
until the rumble of the train had died away before I 
made a move. When all was quiet I crawled out and 
climbed the hill on the south side of the track and took 
a survey of the country as far as I was able. There 
was only one farm house in sight from my point of 
view. 

I had about twenty-five dollars in greenbacks left 
from a purse given me by a young lady, as I sat in the 
train at Cincinnati after leaving McLean's Barracks 
for Camp Chase. I started at once for the farm house, 
as the sun was just about setting and it was bitter cold. 
As I came to an elevation overlooking the farm house 
and not more than two hundred yards from it I saw a 
bluecoated soldier, apparently the owner of the farm, 
come out to the bam, open the door and lead two fine 
Norman horses out, and water them from a long-handled 
wooden pump. He led them back and brought out a 
beautiful little red roan mare ; she was a perfect picture 



228 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

of an ideal horse and I made up my mind at once that 
I would ride her to Dixie. 

I saw my soldier-farmer close the bam door and take 
something from the outside wall near the door, place it 
like a key in a lock, turn it and again replace it in 
position, and return to his house. 

I got out of sight behind the hill in the woods and 
stamped and worked my arms and hands to keep up 
circulation and warmth. As soon as it was dark I crept 
as near the barn as possible and waited until the lights 
were extinguished in the house and all sounds died out. 
I then approached the door of the barn and found it 
fast. I remembered seeing the farmer hang something 
on the wall near the door, and found a bent wire hang- 
ing there. Taking it, I found a small hole in the door 
and inserting the wire I turned it down, and it caught 
against a knob inside, and by exerting a little force a 
bar moved, and the door opened. I went in and felt 
the various horses and found my little mare. After 
some time I found a saddle, bridle and blanket, and 
putting these on the mare I led her out, carefully fast- 
ened the door and hung the wire key back in its place. 
I mounted and rode across the country in a southerly 
direction. There are many low stone fences in this 
region, but as the snow was deep and hard frozen and 
piled against them, I had no difficulty in getting over. 
I had to make a gap in but one, and that was the one 
around the barn where I got my little mare. 

The night I got my horse it was very dark, which 
was in my favor. After crossing several fields I came 
into a good macadam pike, which led in the direction I 
wanted to go, and I followed it until about midnight, 
when I came to a broad, shallow river, which was frozen 
over. I got down and led my horse across. I felt the 
ice sway under our weight, but we crossed without ac- 
cident. 

I continued my course beyond the river until day 
began to dawn, and seeing a dense timber nearby I 
turned into it and rode some distance into the thickest 
part. Here I dismounted and hid my horse, then walked 
some distance, until I could see out across the country 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 2S9 

in the direction I was going to travel the next night. I 
could see, not far from the edge of the woods, a stack 
of hay and a field of corn in the shock. This field was 
in a small bottom near the woods, and no house nor 
any human being was visible. I walked out to a com 
shock and gathered an armful of com, took it to my 
horse, fed her and then returned and got another. I 
ate an ear or two myself, and then taking the blankets 
from under the saddle I sought a warm, sunny spot on 
the south side of a large log, sheltered from the north 
wind, laid down and was soon fast asleep. I slept like a 
log, and late in the afternoon I awoke, fed my horse, 
and as night fell and darkness again covered the land, 
I rode back into the pike and continued my journey. 

I pursued these tactics for several days and nights, 
never venturing to approach a house to ask a question 
except once. As I was passing an isolated region my 
way led just under a window that jutted over the road, 
and I paused at the sound of voices and listened. 1 
found from their conversation that they were Quakers 
and deplored the war and hoped the South would win, 
I stopped and bought part of a cooked ham and some 
homemade bread and sausages, well boiled, from them. 
I inquired the way to Poolesville, Maryland, and found 
I was not more than two days' ride from the Potomac 
river. My only regret was that I had no arms, only 
a small, broken-bladed pocket knife. 

When nearing Poolesville, about ten o'clock one night, 
I could see lights in a house in front of me, and as 1 
approached I could hear the sounds of a piano and the 
swell of voices singing some familiar air. I rode up 
slowly, and found four horses, with officers' trappings, 
and each saddle had a pair of Colt's pistols on the front, 
with ammunition in the cartridge boxes. I secured all 
these, turned the horses loose and let them go ; and I 
got a splendid pair of fine blankets, which were a great 
comfort in the chilly wind. 

Just before daylight I reached the Potomac, which 
was not frozen. I forded it and crossed to the Virginia 
shore, just as day was breaking. Many familiar land- 
scapes greeted me as the daylight appeared, and I 



230 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

again went into hiding until dark. I gave Leesburg a 
wide berth and rode steadily at night by many a well 
remembered path along the foot hills of the Blue Ridge 
Mountains, until I crossed the Rappahannock River. 

Many nights I could see the camp-fires of the 
Yankees, far to my left, and I did not encounter any 
of our pickets until I was across the Rappahannock. I 
was escorted down to Mine Run by a squad of my old 
command, under Corporal Moon. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

Arrival at General Stuart's headquarters — Battle of the 
Wilderness — " Jackson's Ghost " — Death of General 
Stuart — At Spottyslvania Court House — Captured and 
sent to Fort Delaware. 

As soon as I reached General Stuart's headquarters 
I reported to him and apologized for my delay in not 
reporting sooner. I fell into my old scouting habits, 
and on familiar grounds I was soon myself again, and 
with my rifle I made it warm for Grant's pickets on 
the Rappahannock and other points. 

The Yanks were on the move as soon as the sun began 
to warm the earth, in the latter part of April, and as 
the first days of May peeped into the calendar real 
hostilities began. Sharp fighting occurred at Mine 
Run, and General Lee, with his keen rapier, began to 
fence against the overwhelming sledgehammer blows of 
Grant. Again, on the old field of Chancellorsville, in 
the Wilderness, Grant had a grand army three times 
the numerical strength of Lee's ; yes, one of the largest 
and best equipped armies ever marshaled on any battle 
field in America. Against it was opposed the ragged 
veterans of Southland, half-clothed and half -fed; but 
the morale and stamina of that ragged band were worth 
many a division of the hirelings and negroes of the 
mighty hosts that confronted Lee. 

On the sixth day of May the battle along the old 
plank road raged all day, and we fell back from off the 
field some half-mile. We captured an old gray mule, 
and had her on our extreme left wing, on the picket 
line. She was extremely restless and made constant 
endeavors to break away from the boys and get back 
into the Yankee lines. We had to tie her in the center 
with two ropes between two trees to keep her from 
tangling and hurting herself. 

After dark I rode to the extreme end of our lines, 
on the old plank road, and dismounted, leaving my sword, 

231 



232 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

spurs and everything that would rattle or make a noise 
with the pickets. I then visited the vidette and learned 
from him that the Yankees were not more than a hun- 
dred or so yards from us, right in our front. I crawled 
along the berm of the plank road, through a small 
covering of pine sprouts, to the edge of a culvert bridge 
that had been destroyed, and on the opposite side, not 
over seventy or eighty feet away, was their squad of 
videttes. 

I laid still and listened to their conversation. I 
found at once that they were all negroes. They were 
telling what they were going to do to " de rebs " the 
next day. 

I listened breathlessly for a while, until one negro 
broke into the conversation with, " I spec it war about 
here whar dat old he reb, Stonewall Jackson, wur kilt." 

" Say, Sam, whut wud you do if he's ghost wus to 
cumb here now ^ " 

" Oh, hush, nigger, dey hain't no ghostses." 

" Yes, dey is, 'ca'se I'se seed um." 

And an argument began about ghosts, which I knew 
would shut off anything else until a relief guard came 
up. 

It not being a very healthy place, I crawled back mto 
our lines, and as I made my exit I concluded that with 
the aid of the boys we would send them a hona fide 
ghost. 

One of the boys had a large canteen, made of two 
quart pans that had been soldered together, and would 
hold a full half gallon. It had been grazed by a bullet 
under its bottom and rendered useless. I took this and 
cut a grinning mouth, with sharp teeth, large eyes and 
nose, after the manner of a pumpkin scarecrow of 
"All Saints' night." Cutting a hole in the bottom large 
enough to insert my hand I made a regular " death's 
head " of it, and when a candle was inserted it was a 
hideous looking thing in the dark. 

We took an old pack saddle and cut two pine poles 
about the size of a man's wrist and four feet long, 
strapped them to the horns of the X pack saddle and 
tied the " death's head " midway between them. We 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 233 

then placed the saddle on the old mule, and spreading 
part of an old rotten tent cloth over the whole, we 
tied it fast. Gathering a lot of old rusty camp kettles 
and canteens from the battlefield of the year before, 
we fastened these on our ghost so as to rattle and make 
a strange, ghostly noise. 

When all was completed to our satisfaction we led 
the old mule into the plank road and pointed her head 
in the direction of the negroes. One of the boys had 
just lit a fresh " conestoga," a cigar made from the 
whole leaf of tobacco without cutting, rolled and cov- 
ered with a finer quality — they were sometimes nearly 
eighteen inches long, and would keep you smoking for 
half an hour or more. He had just lighted one and 
was standing close by, watching us prepare our ghost. 
As we were ready one of the boys pulled the " cone- 
stoga " from his lips, caught the old mule by the tail, 
hoisted it, and stuck the lighted " conestoga " under. 
She gave an awful squeal as soon as she felt the fire 
scorch, clapped her tail down and fastened it there, and 
down the plank road she went toward the negroes at a 
fearful gait, squealing at every jump, bucking high and 
making the camp kettles rattle at a telling rate. 

We heard an awful stampede through the low-lying 
cedars and underbrush as she entered the negro lines, 
and now and then you could hear a fearful yell far away 
down her trail, but not a gun was fired in any direction. 
For twenty minutes after she left us you could still hear 
the cracking and crashing of the timber and brush in 
the direction of the Rappahannock River, as if a herd 
of cattle were on a stampede. About a dozen of us 
mounted our horses and followed in the wake of our 
ghost, and we passed long lines of stacked muskets in 
the road and hundreds of pairs of blankets, shoes and 
suits of clothing, just as they had been deserted by the 
fleeing negroes of Slocum's division. We followed our 
ghost for two or three miles, turned back, bent whole 
stacks of muskets against the trees, and set the cedar 
brakes on fire behind us. Thus " Jackson's ghost " 
drove Slocum's division into the Rappahannock a year 
after his death. 



234 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

I notice that in " The Annals of the War of the Re- 
bellion," Mr. Dana says of this escapade, that " Slo- 
cum's division, from some unknown cause, broke like 
cowards and deserted their lines." General Jubal A. 
Early, in his memoirs, says of the same incident, " When 
my men advanced the next morning, we found the field 
deserted, with the appearance of a sudden panic, their 
guns left stacked, their shoes, and blankets and knap- 
sacks all deserted." 

And our old gray mule and the boys around the 
picket post alone could have told them the cause. 

I can shut my eyes at this distant day and drink 
through memory's cup that never-to-be-forgotten event, 
and the roar of that mighty host, as it rushed terror 
stricken through the thick, sharp limbs of the green 
and dead cedar trees, with a roar like a tornado ; and 
again, as we sent the scorching flames of a forest fire, 
with its lurid glare, on the wings of the night winds after 
them, it lent added terrors to their already tortured 
brains, and I suppose many of them never halted until 
they were safe in their homes, or the heart of some dis- 
tant city. As the 3'ears silently go down into the vales 
of the past, I can still hear and see it all. I believe 
that if we had advanced upon the Yanks just after 
" Jackson's ghost " passed, we would have stampeded, 
driven back and defeated the whole of Grant's magnifi- 
cent army, and sent it north of the Potomac, a shattered, 
bleeding remnant. I know well that he would never have 
reached the environments of Petersburg, for he would 
have been driven back that night across the Rappahan- 
nock, and we would have had half his men prisoners or 
dead, and all his vast stores in our possession. 

Day after day the steady roll of musketry along our 
whole line continued. Grant, with his sledge-hammer, 
striking with his overwhelming forces, which were con- 
stantly pouring in from the recruiting stations of the 
North to take the place of those slaughtered along our 
lines, in a seemingly unmerciful way, by the rifles and 
rapiers of the immortal Lee. Each move of Grant was 
frustrated and anticipated hours ahead, until the Con- 
federate veterans were weary of the terrible slaughter. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 235 

From Mine Run to Spottsylvania there was a dead 
Yankee left, with his swollen black face turned upward 
to the May sun, for every soldier that Lee had in his 
whole army. This is no " pipe dream " declaration. 
The cold facts of the unbiased historian, when the final 
roll is called, will so reveal it. 

At Yellow Tavern we lost our great cavalry com- 
mander. General J. E. B. Stuart. On the Sunday morn- 
ing just before the awful carnage at Spottsylvania I 
sent a bullet into the neck of General Sedgwick, the 
cavalry commander of General Grant, and avenged the 
death of Stuart. 

I was with Barksdale's old brigade, and through Iny 
telescope I could see a body of officers, sitting and stand- 
ing around a central group. I saw a fine looking ma% 
with a heavy beard, ride up, and instantly every eye 
was turned upon him, and obeisance reverently made 
to this later arrival. I at once conceived the idea that 
this was General Grant. I asked for permission to try 
my rifle at him, and after several refusals I was at last 
permitted to try. The distance was great (twenty- 
two hundred yards), but I had confidence in my old 
Whitworth rifle; taking a careful sight, I sent my 
leaden messenger on its mission of death, and it entered 
General Sedgwick's neck just above his shoulder, and 
he fell a corpse from his horse. 

At daylight on the morning of the twelfth of May, 
while a dense fog obscured everything, our lines were 
broken and Johnson's whole division captured by the 
Yankees. 

I made my way down through the thick undergrowth, 
as near as possible to the place, and watched the enemy. 
I had not been in position more than half an hour when 
just behind me I heard the approach of a body of 
infantry. I can safely say that at this moment, in 
all my experience, I never heard such an awful roar of 
musketry. The air a few inches above my head was 
full of rifle balls, as thick as swarming bees. 

I saw Major Rafe Bell, of General Nat Harris's Mis- 
sissippians, cautiously leading his men into this awful 
storm of death, and as he came within a few feet of 



236 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

me he said, " It seems to me that I should go to the 
right here instead of the left." 

" You are right, Major," I replied, and as I spoke he 
looked at me and said: " Who are you, sir? " 

I told him my name and what I had discovered. He 
was the only field officer in that brigade that I saw, 
and he was as cool as if on parade, giving his orders in 
an unexcited tone. Like a great general he scanned 
every detail of the situation, and when we were in posi- 
tion and the word was given to charge, he swept the 
works clear of every Yank. 

In this " bloody angle," at Spottsylvania Court 
House, I saw dead bodies piled in heaps one on the other, 
and I saw trees, twenty inches in diameter, cut down by 
rifle bullets ; I saw piled around the stumps of these 
trees bushels of battered minie bullets. This alone 
gives you some idea of the fearful rifle fire that raged 
in the " bloody angle " that day. 

When we made the charge to retake the works I 
went in with Major Bell and we drove the Yankees out. 
When we were within twenty yards of them I was in 
full run, leaning forward, with my pistol in my hand, 
and a Yankee fired almost in my face. The ball entered 
my left breast, grazed the heart, and passed out, cutting 
two ribs in front and one behind. The shock was 
great, but I did not fall; the blow checked but did not 
throw me. I fired as he was climbing the breastworks, 
and cut his backbone in two, killing him instantly. As 
I rose the fortification just above him I received a ball 
in the thigh and one in the ankle. I fell on top of the 
works, and several other bullets grazed me in diff'erent 
places. I was not able to move, and lay for some time 
exposed to the terrible cross-fire. 

Our men recovered and held the works until the 
Yankees again tried their flanking movement, and Lee 
headed them off. I and all the wounded that could 
not be moved were placed in field hospitals with our 
surgeons and left on the battlefield. Here a party of 
Yankee cavalry raiders found us, and with our surgeons 
carried us all to northern prisons. With a good many 
others I was carried to Fort Delaware. 



CHAPTER XIX 

At Fort Delaware — On board the Crescent — In Charles- 
ton harbor — Under fire of our own guns — I agree to be 
exchanged for Major Harry White. 

I SPENT a week or so in the prison hospital at Fort 
Delaware, and had kind attention from some visiting 
Sisters of Mercy and a priest from a Catholic school in 
or near Philadelphia, Pa. 

Fort Delaware is on an island in the Delaware River, 
between Philadelphia and Capes May and Henlopen. 
After leaving the hospital, I was placed in the officers' 
quarters, where there were about a hundred men to a 
room, and the monotony of prison life again began. 
This I need not again recount, as one prison was but 
a duplicate of the other; the only difference being the 
men who had charge. I must say that Fort Delaware, 
in her Captain Auhl, had the meanest commandant of 
all that I came in contact with, for he was absolutely 
devoid of any of the attributes of a gentleman or a 
soldier. 

On the twenty-first day of June, 1864, General Jeff 
Thompson, of Missouri, General C. B. Vance, of North 
Carolina, Major W. G. Owens, of Harrodsburg, Ky., 
and myself, were taken out of the prison pen and con- 
fined in an inner cell, under ground, just beneath the 
" portcullis " of Fort Delaware, and chained to a swivel 
ring in the center of the cell. This cell was about eight 
feet square, and here we lay without even a shadow of 
light from the twenty-first of June until the fourth of 
July. A cup of water and a half a loaf of prison 
bread was our ration for twenty-four hours. And as 
regularly as these rations were shoved through a cat 
hole in the bottom of the cell door, and our empty cups 
of the day before returned, the Dutch guard would sing 
out : " We dakes you oudt ad sax o'glock, und shoots 

237 



238 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

mit you." Old JefF would hurl an oath of defiance at 
him every time it was repeated. 

We were told by someone that we were held as host- 
ages by the Yanks for something that our men were 
doing to the Yanks in Libby, or Castle Winder in Rich- 
mond, and we made no complaint. 

After the lapse of a week our eyes became accus- 
tomed to the darkness, and we could discern small ob- 
jects. We found a piece of board about six inches 
square, and with our finger nails we gouged a dent in its 
center and then a round ring, equidistant from the cen- 
ter. We would gather around this board and place two 
" graybacks " in the pit in the center, and watch the 
fight or race. If it was a battle, one or the other was 
certain to be slain, and if no battle, then a race took 
place for the outer circle. I had a champion fighter or 
runner, as the case might be, and I kept him, or her, 
"stabled in the small bare place just above my ear, and 
while he or she lived I won most of the Confederate 
shin plasters that my companions had. I can safely 
say that I have been just as much excited at one of these 
races as I ever was on the race course, amid the waving 
hats and yelling crowds, anywhere in my own or foreign 
countries. 

I missed my champion one day, and the boys said 
Old JefF caught and killed him while I was asleep. 
Poor old JefF, how my heart went out to him ; he a 
prisoner and his devoted wife in a madhouse. 

On the fourth of July my companions were taken 
out of the dark cell and their chains removed. An 
armorer came in and put a longer chain on my ankle 
and riveted it fast to the center ring in the floor. My 
rations were cut from twelve ounces of water to ten, 
and my prison loaf from ten ounces to eight. A pair 
of handcuffs were snapped upon me, and I was almost 
helpless. I made no efFort to find out why I was thus 
treated, and bore it with Indian stoicism. 

Once every twenty-four hours I would hear the guard 
come to the door and say, " You dere? " 

I would say, " Yes, what do you want? " 

" Dis your grub me haf ." 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 239 

As soon as I would push my empty water cup in reach 
he would fill it and send my bread through the same 
hole, then he would say that they were going to shoot 
me the next morning at six o'clock. 

This life was very trying, and I wasted away under 
it, but kept my spirits up. The handcuffs I slipped 
off easily and never put them on until I heard the tramp 
of feet near my door. I had no blanket, and the hard 
stone floor almost made my bones protrude through my 
skin. The " graybacks " feasted and multiplied rapidly, 
despite my all-day hunts and constant slaughter of them, 
and this was my sole and only employment, day in and 
day out. I did not suffer from the intense July and 
August heat, as I was in a dark, cold cell and under 
ground. 

At times the atmosphere was very heavy, damp and 
foul, but I would forget it, and shake off the depress- 
ing feeling, and turn my thoughts to the wide, wind- 
swept prairies of my native State, and let memory stray 
back over her flower-strewn hills and vales, and lose 
myself far from the " now." The only sounds that came 
to my ears from the outside world was the boom of the 
morning and evening gun or a salute fired for some 
passing magnate, or some reputed victory over my 
own kindred in far-away Dixie. 

Somewhere, far above my head, as the sun sank 
toward the equator, I could see a faint glow of light, 
as if the sun were shining through a hole. This spot 
grew brighter, as the sun sank lower from the summer's 
solstice, and I used to watch for it to appear with all 
the intensity of my nature, and was as glad to greet it 
as a storm-tossed mariner would be to catch the gleam 
of a familiar light that pointed him to a haven of rest 
and safety. 

To this day I know not what charges were preferred 
against me, and I knew not what hour I would be called 
to meet my doom. I became callous to suffering, and 
prayed for death to end my sufferings and torture. I 
longed for something to read. I reviewed in detail 
every event in my life in all its minutae. I would lay 
for hours and catch the vermin that were sapping the 



240 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

life blood from my wasting frame, place them in the 
pit on the race board, and watch them combat or racCj 
and exult in maniacal glee at the death struggles of 
each in their battles royal. 

The dials of time in solitary confinement seemed 
clogged and hours stretched away into days, and days 
into weeks, and weeks seemingly into years. I could 
not lie in one position long at a time, as the stone floor 
would make my bones ache, and my flesh would become 
numb and dead. The odor of the putrid wooden sink 
that had not been emptied since my companions left 
me was, at times, almost overpowering. 

My eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness and 
I could see the seams of mortar between the layers of 
stone in my cell. At times I would have cravings to 
live, solely to avenge my suff^erings on my keepers ; and 
I registered a vow daily, that never again would I 
spare a single one who should cross my path. I would 
have given several years of my life to be able 
to take a good bath, put on clean clothing and be 
rid of the " gray-backs," that so tortured my flesh and 
murdered my rest. I went so far one day as to ask the 
Dutchman, whom I could not see, only hear, to bring 
me a tub and water enough to take a bath or even enough 
to bathe my face. He only grunted and said that it 
was of no use to me. When he refused I felt humiliated, 
and I could have torn his heart out. I shut myself, 
as it were, in a shell, and never again did I open my 
lips to him. 

The days crept slowly by, and on the twentieth day 
of August, just two months from my incarceration in 
that gloomy cell, its cell doors were thrown open, the 
handcuff^s taken off^, the shackles stricken from my 
ankle, and I was ordered to get up and follow my 
guards. I was too weak to obey, and I was roughly 
raised and placed on crutches, and after several at- 
tempts I was ordered by that miserable Dutch scoundrel, 
Auhl, to come on or he would chain and lock me up 
again. 

With the most excruciating torture, every fiber of 
my body tingling with throbbing pains, by sheer will 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 241 

power I moved forward. I entered a blinding light, so 
intense and powerful that I was absolutely unable to 
see a step in front of me, and I fell heavily against 
some invisible impediment and received a severe shock. 
I was lifted to my feet by someone and my arm grasped 
by a strong, friendly hand. As I became accustomed to 
the hght, I found that I was escorted by one of our 
own men, a Lieutenant Legg, of the Fiftieth Virginia 
Infantry. 

I was one of a band of six hundred Confederate of- 
ficers put on board a steamship called the Crescent 
City. We were marched aboard and down into the 
hold of the vessel, where it was very warm to me. At 
my own request I was placed on the top tier of the 
shelving that was to be used as bunks, and on the inside 
of the vessel's gangway away from the slosh of the waves 
on the sides. My feet were near a nest of boilers, but 
I heeded them not. As I lay on the soft, springy 
plank and the darkness enabled me to see, I felt a 
strange thrill of pleasure, and I lay in a dreamy, happy, 
trance-like state, and listened to the voices of comrades 
around me. 

I don't think that I ever enjoyed anything more 
in all my hfe. Tbe change, from that dark, loath- 
some dungeon of eternal solitude and misery, to this 
hght-hearted, joyous throng was beyond compare. I 
did not care to talk, I only wished to hear the sweet 
murmur of their voices. 

From them I learned our supposed destination, and 
heard of the exchange of my three companions. Gen- 
eral Thompson, General Vance and Major Owens, and 
also that this was the twentieth day of August, 1864. 
My feelings were like those of some lost soul, I imagined, 
who enters the gates of Paradise after an aeon of suf- 
fering. The ship was a real Paradise to me. I cared 
not how long the voyage lasted. And to-day as I look 
back down the forty-odd years that have elapsed since 
that voyage I shudder at the horrors and tortures that 
my comrades endured. It lasted from the twentieth 
of August until the seventh of September, before our 
feet touched the shore. 



^42 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

Our fare was pea soup, very hot, and " hard tack." 
The air around us was stifling, and we had to blow with 
our breath to cool our drinking water, which would 
really scald you if you did not. There was but one 
small evaporator aboard, and this had to furnish dis- 
tilled sea water, not only for us, but for the guards and 
sailors besides, and there was no ice in those days. There 
was but one small sink, on the the larboard side above 
the paddle wheel, with room for only one occupant at 
a time. The furnaces and boilers were only separated 
from us by a rough plank wall, that at times was so 
hot that you could not hold your hand against it. The 
narrow gangway, not more than thirty inches wide, was 
constantly crowded, with passengers to and from the 
sink, and this passageway was a reeking mass from 
those overcome by seasickness. 

You can imagine our condition when you take in the 
surroundings. We had to lie down all the time, as our 
bunks were not of a sufficient height to permit a sitting 
posture, as the whole distance from floor to ceiling was 
not more than eight feet. The hatchways were kept 
battened down, and the unventilated hold was a sweat 
box, even without the heat of the furnaces to add to the 
horrors. The odors of the reeking, fermenting vomit, 
and the sweat of the human bodies that permeated the 
foul air, exceeded anything that you could imagine, 
and it was beyond my powers of description. 

Strange to say, not a man died, and not one fainted 
or was overcome by his fearful surroundings. Hope of 
landing in Dixie and meeting the loved ones at home 
once more, held us spellbound and immune to all sur- 
roundings. The three tiers of human heads, with the 
perspiration trickling down from each pale, haggard 
brow, is a scene I can never forget, and it haunts me to 
this distant day. 

Our ship grounded, one dark night, off Cape Romain, 
on the South Carolina coast, and we lay aground until 
late the next day. There was a stir among the prison- 
ers, and some talk of capturing the ship, and going 
ashore to freedom and home ; but nothing came of it, 
and the eff'ort was weak hearted, as all were under the 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 243 

impression that we were going to Charleston to be ex- 
changed, and if we attempted to escape and were cap- 
tured, our exchange would be annulled; so the plan was 
not carried out. But had we been able to look into 
the future and see the awful fate that was in store for 
us, we would have captured the ship, burned it, mur- 
dered the guards and thrown their carcasses into the sea. 

I, on my upper bunk, could look down on the misery 
of my companions. I was not sick a moment, but 
steadily improved and gained strength as our ship sped 
southward. 

We ran into Beaufort Harbor, S. C, on the twenty- 
ninth day of August, and we were all marched out on 
deck, new guards placed over us and our bunks and the 
gangway thoroughly cleaned, fumigated and deodorized. 
We could saunter around the decks and enjoy the soft 
balmy sea breezes and enjoy the distant view of the 
islands with the trees and houses. 

I lay like one in a trance, looking up at the clear blue 
sky, the dancing waters, and the dark green of the forest 
in the distance, and as the night fell and the stars peeped 
out, I hated to retire to the hot stifling atmosphere of 
that awful hold. When we marched down the heat was 
not so great, for the fires were banked, the air was much 
purer and the foul scents dissipated. I felt truly thank- 
ful and was soon sound asleep. 

For several days we lay off the shore in sight of 
Beaufort and Hilton Head, with men-of-war around us 
and in the ofBng. One day we were steamed up directly 
into Charleston harbor, and we thought the hour of 
freedom had arrived. I rested quietly in my bunk, and 
listened to the rumors brought by those who were allowed 
the freedom to visit the upper decks and gaze at all that 
was happening. 

On the seventh of September we were landed on a 
sand bar on Morris Island and marched through deep 
sand for a mile or two, and placed in a stockade en- 
closure, about a hundred yards square, surrounded by 
black negro guards. Just behind us was Battery Gregg, 
Battery Wagner, and Chatfield. We were sheltered 
from the scorching rays of the sun by small fly tents, 



244 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

and our water supplies came from pits we dug in the 
sand- 
In marching across the sands to our quarters in the 
stockade, I was so weak that I often fell, and the brutal 
guards, instead of lifting me up with their hands," 
would ram their bayonets under me and toss me up, 
prod me roughly, and say, " Keep up, you damn Rebel 

son of a b , or we will stick our bayonets through 

you." 

Slowly I made my way, and at last reached the en- 
closure. I gazed around as I dropped on the sand in 
front of one of the small " A " tents, allotted one to 
each four men, and all around the parapets of the en- 
closure I could see rows of surly negro guards, members 
of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment under the 
command of Col. C. D. Shaw. Behind us on three sides 
frowned the guns of Wagner, Chatfield, and Gregg, all 
in our rear; in front was Moultrie, Sumter, Pickens, 
and the guns of Charleston, and some gunboats and 
floating batteries. 

After resting and recovering my senses, I dug a pit 
in the sand, down to water, stripped, and for the first 
time since the twenty-first day of June, I bathed my 
hands and face and took a bath. I used the smooth 
white sand for soap, and for an hour or so I enjoyed 
the scrubbing, until my skin put on a ruddy glow. 
Then, in the bright warm September sun, I sat and 
washed and cleansed my clothing, rubbing and examin- 
ing every fold and seam, until I felt that every vestige 
of vermin and their spawn had been obliterated. I laid 
each garment out separately on the warm sand, and 
rolled over and over in it, until I felt a tingling glow of 
reaction in every muscle. My comrades were amused 
at my performances, but said nothing. 

When I was dressing, the huge guns of the batteries 
in our rear sent a volley of shells, hissing and humming 
over our heads, at the city of Charleston, and at Fort 
Sumter. Soon we saw the smoke curl up from these 
points, and right over and just beyond us our shells 
were bursting, in reply to theirs. The fragments of 
these shells would hum, hiss, and fall all around us. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 245 

We greeted these messengers from Dixie with wild 
shouts and clapping of hands ; and instantly came a 
voice from our negro guards : 

" You stop dat yellin' down dar, or I gwine to fling 
some bullits on you ! " 

Our laughter was over, for we realized our position 
at once. We were under the fire of our own guns, and 
those of the Yankees, for every now and then a shell 
from Wagner, Gregg, or Chatfield would burst just 
over us, and fragments would cut a tent cloth or tear 
up the sand near a group of us. It was as if we were 
supporting a battery without shelter in an open field. 
The Yankees would say, when their shells exploded in 
our midst, that it was a premature explosion, an acci- 
dent ; but we knew that they could not have so occurred, 
every hour or two, day and night, for forty-two days, 
without being intentional. 

This ceaseless bombardment day and night banished 
sleep from our weary prison-racked frames, and kept a 
nameless, undefined dread hanging over each man. 

I only stayed in the prison pen from September 7th 
until September 15th, eight days. Our rations for those 
days were these : Breakfast, four worm-eaten " hard 
tack " crackers, very rotten. Dinner, one-half pint of 
sandy pea soup, very watery and thin. Supper, all the 
ocean air you could inhale. Now this was the daily 
menu furnished us by the United States Government. 

We answered to roll call three times a day, and were 
counted by the negro guards, and a little sawed-off^ 
Yankee lieutenant for a while took the report of our 
numbers as the negroes would give it to him. The ab- 
solute prison commander was a Colonel Hallowell; than 
whom God never created a meaner man. In a speech to 
us he said that if we obeyed the rules, he would treat us 
as gentlemen. We obeyed every rule to the very letter, 
and he treated us as wild beasts of prey. 

On the fifteenth of September, I was sitting on part 
of a hard tack box, not a great way from the entrance, 
when a Captain Frank Bell, of the Invalid Corps, en- 
tered the stockade, and came directly up to me and said, 
" What is your name? " 



246 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

I told him, and he said, " What is your rank in the 
Rebel army? " 

I said, " I am a major in the regular Confederate 
army." 

He then asked if I knew who was in command of the 
rebel forces in Charleston. I replied that General W. J. 
Hardee was in command of the whole of the forces, and 
General Sam Jones, of the post. 

" How long have you known General Hardee .f^ " 

I answered, " All my life." 

" Have you any influence with him ? " 

I asked, " What kind of influence.? " 

He replied, " Have you sufficient influence with him to 
have yourself exchanged for one of our majors, who is 
now a prisoner in his hands.? " 

I replied that there was not a Yankee in Charleston 
that General Hardee would not exchange for me. 

He then said, " Get your things, and come with me." 

I told him I only had what I had on. 

" Come on then," he commanded. 

As he turned I said, " Captain, you will have to help 
me up." 

He turned and said, " I can't help you much, as I 
am one-legged myself." 

With his assistance we passed out the gate, and only 
a short distance off" I saw a boat waiting for us. We 
were carried to a large ship out in the offing by a small 
steam launch, and on this larger vessel I was introduced 
to General J. G. Foster, major-general commanding 
that department. His headquarters were on board this 
vessel, lying off^ Hilton Head. 

When I was ushered into his presence, he asked about 
the same questions that Captain Bell had, and I made the 
same answers. I signed a fifteen days' parole, agreeing 
to be exchanged for a Major Harry White, of a Penn- 
sylvania regiment, who had been elected to some office, 
a Congressman I think, and they were anxious for him 
to be at home, and prepared for the next meeting ; or it 
may have been that he was only a member of the Penn- 
sylvania legislature, of this I am not certain — anyhow, 
I well remember Captain Bell's saying that they were 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES Ml 

anxious to have him in the Assembly, and that White was 
a great friend of his. 

Captain Bell was a captain, or had been, of the fa- 
mous Buck Tail Rangers that Stonewall Jackson's men 
almost annihilated in the valley of the Shenandoah in 
1862. 

I signed my parole in duplicate, and put the duplicate 
in my pocket, and told the General that I would like 
Captain Bell to accompany me to the city of Charleston, 
and accompany Major Harry White back, as I was as 
certain as death of making the exchange. He agreed 
to my proposal, and after a short preparation, Captain 
Bell was ready, and we steamed away to the landing at 
Beaufort. Here we got into an ambulance, and with a 
driver, and flag of truce officer, we drove to the Po- 
cataligo River, and met our pickets, and by them were 
escorted up to the railway station of Pocataligo. Here 
I met several men of the old 5th South Carolina Regi- 
ment who were with our brigade (D. R. Jones's) in the 
first battle of Manassas. 

We were given transportation from Pocataligo to 
Charleston, on the railroad, and when the train came we 
got aboard. Just before entering the fortifications 
around the city, a guard halted the train, and an inspec- 
tor came aboard and examined our papers. He informed 
Captain Bell that he could not permit him to enter the 
city, but that he could remain on the outside, and ample 
provision would be made for his comfort while negotia- 
tions were proceeding regarding the exchange. I told 
Captain Bell that I would not detain him long. 



CHAPTER XX 

At General Hardee's headquarters — I refuse to be ex- 
changed for White — Confederate prison at Charleston — 
I am exchanged for Major Charles P. Mattocks — Yan- 
kees refuse to accept the exchange and I go back to 
Morris Island. 

As soon as the train reached the depot I got in a hack 
and was driven to General Hardee's headquarters. As I 
entered, the General was sitting in his shirt sleeves with 
his feet upon the table perusing a paper. He looked up 
and recognized me, rose and said, " Lamar, I'm very 
glad to see you, and glad you have come, as I have much 
work in your line for you to do." 

I answered, " General, I am a prisoner on parole only, 
and am here to see you about a special exchange of 
myself for a Major Harry White, of a Pennsylvania 
regiment, who I understand is a prisoner in this city." 

He looked worried for a moment, and said, " They 
have quit exchanging prisoners, and I am afraid that I 
can't help you." 

I pulled out my parole, and he read it carefully, and 
said, " Harry White ; why, there is a letter from him 
now on my desk that I have not read ; it is to a lawyer 
in Richmond." 

I asked if I might read it, and he gave his consent, 
and handed me the missive to peruse. I took my seat at 
the table, opened and read it. It was to a cousin of 
mine, a former classmate of White's at some northern 
college. 

I read it word for word, and the more I read the more 
contempt I felt, and the madder I got. I remarked, 
" General, I would like to make a copy of this letter, if 
you have no objections." 

He seemed in a brown study, as my pen flew across 
the paper and he could see that I was mad. After fin- 
ishing the copy, I wrote a postscript at the bottom of 
White's letter and I reproduce it for your perusal. 

248 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 249 

Headquarters of Genl. W. J. Hardee, 

Charleston, S. C. 
Genl. J. G. Foster, U. S. A., commanding besieging 
forces around Charleston, S. C. : 
Dear Sir: I positively and emphatically refuse to be 

exchanged for this a 

Very truly yours, 

I refolded the letter, and asked for a courier to send 
it to Captain Frank Bell at the flag of truce station, to 
be handed, sealed, in person by him to General Foster. 

General Hardee said, " Why, Lamar, what is the mat- 
ter with you ? " 

I replied that I would rot in a Yankee dungeon before 
I would be exchanged for such a man. I then read him 
the letter, and my reply, at the bottom. 

He asked what sort of treatment we were receiving as 
prisoners at the hands of the Yankees. I gave him a 
full and clear account, and he said, " Don't be too hasty, 
for I don't like the idea of your going back to such a 
life as you describe. We have a good many prisoners 
here in the city; go and pick out the sort of a one you 
want, and I will send him through the lines to Foster, 
and maybe we can effect an exchange yet." 

I thanked him and said I would try. I got in the 
hack, and told the driver to take me to the Yankee 
prison. 

As we were passing down the street, I caught a 
glimpse of Lieutenant Harrolson, of our navy, whom I 
had not seen for several years, and I hailed him and 
asked where he was bound, and he answered that he was 
on his way to see Captain Sharp, our naval ordnance of- 
ficer. I asked him to get in with me, and I would drive 
to his destination. I told him my mission was to the 
Yankee prisoners, to get one for a special exchange for 
myself, and he said that there was a crowd of them in the 
Roper hospital wards, adjoining their office, and that I 
might make a selection there without going out to the 
general prison. This suited me exactly and I remarked 
that I would get a wounded one, like myself, from the 
hospital. 



250 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

On entering the office, I was introduced to Captain 
Sharp, and was escorted into the prison hospital among 
the Yanks. Here I found the prisoners playing chess, 
reading books and papers, writing, or lolling on good 
soft mattresses ; everything neat and clean, and here 
and there a Southern lady waiting on them, with tea, 
coffee, milk, and clean white bread, and beaten biscuits, 
carried on waiters by servants. 

The contrast was so great that I asked one of these 
ladies if they were really Yankee prisoners? 

She smiled and said, " Certainly they are, sir ; did you 
never see one before.'' " 

I answered, " Not like these." 

I stood and looked at them for some time, then I said, 
" Boys, I am just from General Foster's headquarters. 
I am a prisoner in his hands and I am over here for the 
purpose of getting exchanged for some good Yankee 
major; one who will meet me on the battlefield and give 
me a chance to send a bullet into him ; one who will serve 
his country to the end, and one who will tell the truth 
about us when he gets back home. Now I came down 
here to pick me out just such a man, but in looking at 
you all, I cannot make up my mind which of you to take, 
so I am going to ask you to pick one of your number, 
whom you know will fill all these requirements. Now 
select him as soon as you can, and send him up to Gen- 
eral Hardee's headquarters, and we will send him to 
General Foster by flag of truce right away." 

Now the reader of course wants to know why I re- 
fused to be exchanged for the one I was specifically 
designated for. In his letter to the Richmond lawyer, 
he promised that he would never, if exchanged, again 
enter the Federal service in any capacity, and that he 
would do anything that this lawyer would request, etc. 
It was the most woebegone, cringing, begging letter that 
I had ever read in my life ; and it made my flesh creep, 
and every instinct of my soul to revolt. I would have 
been drawn and quartered before I would have accepted 
him as my equal in an exchange. 

I reported to General Hardee my decision about the 
manner of getting a Yankee to send under a flag of 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 251 

truce, and he promised to give him a parole like mine, 
and send him through the lines as soon as he presented 
himself. 

I felt so free that I drove down to a livery stable, 
mounted a horse and rode out into the country. I en- 
tered a dense forest, sat for an hour or two with my 
back against a large oak, and watched the birds and 
squirrels come down to the cypress brake and drink, and 
the scent of the woods was like sweet perfume to my 
weary prison soul. I rested my head on the root of a 
tree, and then I got up and took off my saddle, and 
folding the blanket between the roots of another large 
live oak, I lay down with my eyes toward the fleeting 
clouds, and for an hour or more I enjoyed the sylvan 
solitude as it seemed I never had before. 

I did not return until the sun was sinking into the 
shadows of the west. Then slowly, and thoughtfully, I 
rode back to headquarters, and learned that Major 
Charles P. Mattocks, of a Maine regiment, had been 
chosen, and had been paroled and sent back with Captain 
Bell to General Foster. I gave myself no further con- 
cern about exchanges. 

I had a good serviceable uniform made, and plenty of 
underwear and serviceable shirts, and several fine ones. 
I borrowed a good traveling bag from Lieut Harrolson, 
and paid a visit to some friends at Columbia. I enjoyed 
my fifteen days' parole with all the abandon I possibly 
could. I gave an account to the papers of our sur- 
roundings and treatment on Morris Island, and of our 
trip on the old Gulf Steamer Crescent City, from Fort 
Delaware, and I made an appeal to the citizens, and 
ladies especially, for shoes, clothing, tobacco, tea, coffee, 
sugar, and delicacies generally for our sick. I com- 
pared our rations with those I saw given the Yankee 
prisoners, both in their prison camp and in the Roper 
hospital. In a few days large quantities of supplies 
began to come into the provost marshal's hands for the 
prisoners on Morris Island, all directed in my care. 

General Hardee informed me that the Yankees refused 
to accept Major Mattocks in place of Major White; 
and that he sent Mattocks through the lines three 



252 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

times, but. was unable to effect the exchange. I felt the 
disappointment keenly. 

On the last day of September I went down to the pro- 
vost's office before breakfast, and informed him that I 
would leave that day for Morris Island prison, by flag 
of truce, and to have all packages for the immortal six 
hundred Confederate officers ready, and I would take 
them. I had laid in a bountiful supply of clothing, 
tobacco, etc., for my individual use, and had these sep- 
arate and distinct by themselves, while a car was loaded 
with the packages for the prisoners. 

At ten o'clock our train pulled out for the flag of 
truce station at Pocataligo ; I bade the waiting crowd 
good-bye, and back to the living hell I went. 

When we reached the flag of truce station, the Yankee 
officer informed me that nothing would be received by 
him, except my own individual property ; that such were 
his orders. I felt a pang of regret, as I had anticipated 
the pleasure my efforts, and the bountiful supplies sent 
by the ladies and the citizens of Charleston, would af- 
ford. But there was no alternative; alone I had to go, 
and the supplies were left in charge of the trainmen. 
All marked in my name were placed in the boat and we 
pushed off for Hilton Head. 

How different were my feelings on this return trip ! 
It is hard to even make a comparison. The outward, 
homeward bound from the terrible charnel house of the 
Yankee prison pen to light and freedom, I had enjoyed 
to its fullest but fifteen days before; and now, back to 
those same dark and well remembered horrors, had a de- 
pressing influence on my physical as well as mental 
faculties. 

On that voyage all was hope and brightness ; now 
only gloom and sad disappointment, and a giant despair 
held me in an iron grasp. By a desperate effort I shook 
off the shackles of thought, and assumed a devil-may- 
care attitude. I laughed, and entertained my flag of 
truce companions with jokes and yams, until the decks 
would echo with their laughter, and I was glad that I 
was not alone with my own inner thoughts. When I 
clambered up the sides of General Foster's headquarters 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 253 

vessel, a peal of laughter from my flag of truce boat 
companions, and their " good-byes," still rang in my 
ears, and re-echoed as I went down the cabin stairs. 

General Foster greeted me with, " Well, I see you did 
not have as much influence with General Hardee as you 
thought you had." 

" How is that, General.? " 

" Why, you did not eff'ect the exchange of yourself 
for Major White, as you thought you would." 

"General, did you read Major White's letter that I 
sent you, with my postscript added.'' " 

" Well, yes, I read them." 

" Now, General, would you, as a man, have been will- 
ing, with all the facts and proofs before you, to be 
exchanged for this man.'' " 

" Well, sir, is not that pen on Morris Island a miser- 
able place to stay? " 

" Yes, General, it is a hell on earth." 

" Is not that old ship's hold another.'' " 

" Yes, sir ; it is a floating hell, and no mistake." 

" Now Major Fontaine, you seem to be a man of in- 
telligence and of plain common sense, fully able to see 
and comprehend the horrors of your surroundings and 
the exact situation, and it does seem to me, that being 
thus fully informed, I would have accepted an exchange 
of any man or thing, even a yellow dog, for myself, 
under the circumstances." 

" Well, General," I replied, " that is the diff^erence be- 
tween you and me, and it is the true diff^erence between a 
Yankee and a true rebel soldier. My honor is dearer to 
me than life, and I could never have held up my head 
and faced my comrades, and those I love best on earth, 
with the fact staring me in the face that I had cringed, 
or cowed, before the fate in front of me, and accepted 
a dishonorable exchange of myself, for one whom I did 
not consider my equal, merely for the purpose of escap- 
ing the fate that so many of my comrades were enduring. 
The thought to me. General, is so repugnant to my inner 
feelings, that I would suff^er death by slow torture, 
rather than thus to lower the high standard that a true 
soldier should ever hold aloft." 



254 INIY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

He replied, " Well, I can't understand why you want 
to suffer, just because some of your friends do." 

I said, " General, you look at it in a different light 
from me ; I only see a so-called man, who has written a 
vow that if he is exchanged he will never serve his nation 
again, in any capacity whatever, no matter how much 
his nation may need him. Now, General, of what use 
is he to you, or your people, or your country ; and must 
I give such a one liberty ? No ! a thousand times no. I 
have one great sorrow that will ever haunt me, and that 
is that my name is linked with his." 

The General remained silent, and I think he saw the 
point and appreciated my feelings on the subject; I 
will give him that much credit anyhow, although his 
horrid treatment of my companions in the prison pen 
belied every attribute of a soldier or a man. 

He was silent for some time after I had finished my 
defence, and sat with his hands folded. At last he said, 
" Have you any friends in the stockade .? " 

I replied, " General, every man in that pen under 
whose gray coat throbs the heart of a true Confederate 
soldier, is a friend of mine." 

" Oh ! I don't mean that ; have you not some particu- 
lar ones whom you think a great deal more of than of 
the others; can't you particularize.'* " 

" Certainly, General, all of us have some companions 
that we think more of than of others," 

" Well, give me their names." 

I began at once to call the names of those whom I 
thought a great deal of and who were warm personal 
friends, and a clerk was making a list, as I named them. 
I had called about a dozen, when the thought flashed into 
my brain that this might be a trick to involve my friends 
in the same fate that had been meted out to me in the 
past, and that I had better not give him any more ; so 
I halted. 

He said, " Is that all the friends you have.? " 

I replied, " Is not that enough.'' " 

And he said, " No, I want about sixty." 

I then concluded that if we had to suffer, I would take 
those that had made themselves obnoxious to many of 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 255 

the boys in their daily intercourse, and let them share 
my fate. So I began and called their names until our 
roll contained sixty names in all. 

After the roster was complete, the General said, " Cap- 
tain Bell informs me that you admired an old church- 
yard and church as you passed through Beaufort, on 
your way to Pocataligo, and said that, if you had your 
choice, you would like to spend the balance of your days 
in a spot as quiet and beautiful as that old churchyard, 
and its surroundings. Now I am going to parole you 
and your congenial comrades, send you to this old 
church, and give you the freedom of its adjoining 
grounds. I will give you a guard of old disabled sol- 
diers to protect you from all intruders ; and I will allow 
you to trade and buy from the citizens any of the mar- 
ket products you may wish to add to your prison rations. 
I do this. Major, in honor of you, for I see that you are 
a man that will not betray a trust. Now you can go 
at once to your new quarters." 

It would be impossible to describe my feelings as I 
bade General Foster good-bye, and I would have given 
much to be able to change the names on that roster, 
but I kept the secret in my own heart. 

I was not required to give my written parole ; the 
General said my verbal promise was enough for him 
while I was in the shadow of the old church and its 
grounds. 

I went at once to my quarters, and found everything 
nice and clean ; quarters were prepared for sixty men, 
and the pews had been converted into bunks. 

The next morning my comrades all arrived. We spent 
a month or two in this delightful place. Our personal 
guards were real soldiers, belonging to the invalid 
corps, and had been crippled by our bullets. Capt. Frank 
Bell visited us often, and gave us the news from the out- 
side world, frequently showing us maps of the progress 
of the war. These maps were issued weekly, giving the 
standing and advance of the Federal army, much as the 
weather maps of the United States do to-day. 

I remember that a great serpent was coiled around 
the " so-called " Confederacy, and each day his coils 



256 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

grew smaller, and our chances of success less. The 
places of each corps was designated, and its commander 
given. The head of the serpent was just over Rich- 
mond, and its fiery tongue was touching Petersburg, 
while its fangs were exposed, ready to be driven into both 
cities. These " war maps " were our constant theme of 
discussion and they did not bring much cheer to us. 

I would often wander alone around the old church- 
yard, and read the names on the tombs. One in particu- 
lar had a strange fascination for me. It was just a 
plain shaft with no name or date, but on it was carved 
in simple gothic letters, these words: 

" Stranger, Stop? My Father Sleeps Here." 

It made a deep impression on me, and I can never 
forget it. 

I shared with my companions all the delicacies my 
money could purchase ; and the supplies that I had 
brought from Charleston. Late in November I was 
taken with a wasting diarrhoea, and was sent to hospital 
at Hilton Head. I was too sick and weak to pay atten- 
tion to my surroundings ; I only remember seeing some 
familiar faces that I had not seen since T left Morris 
Island on my exchange trip. I remember seeing an 
armed guard at the door as I was carried into the room, 
and of seeing other sick men on low, hard rough-looking 
bunks. I also remember being carried out one day in 
a cot by two rough-looking men and being placed in 
a boat, and of being Hfted up on deck of a vessel and 
carried down into a large cabin, with small beds all in 
rows, with men lying in them. How long I laid in one 
6f these I have no recollection. 

One day I recognized one or two of the men that 
were attending to me, and heard them speaking of how 
cold it was. And then I began to feel the rock of the 
vessel and feel the jar of the ship, as it would jerk 
against the anchor chains. I asked one of my nurses 
where we were, and he said that we were on a prison hos- 
pital ship, off Hilton Head, in the harbor. I felt the 
slosh of the waves, as they pounded against the sides of 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 257 

the vessel, and I asked if I could get up and put on my 
clothes, as I felt that it would do me good. I was in- 
formed that they did not bring my clothes on board, and 
that they had never seen them. 

One evening the storm increased, and Capt. J. J. An- 
drews, one of my nurses, came to me and said, " Major, 
it is a fearful night, half raining, and half sleeting; 
the wind is blowing a fearful gale from the northeast, 
and the tide is so strong that it is almost dragging the 
anchors, and they have taken the negro guards off of 
the upper deck." 

I asked how far we were from the land, and he said 
not more than a mile or two, he thought. I asked if the 
tide and waves were going in toward the land, and he 
said yes. I asked if he would not throw me overboard, 
and he said no, that I would be drowned or swallowed 
by a shark as soon as I touched the water. I waited 
some minutes and listened to the war of the elements, 
and asked him again to aid me in getting overboard, as 
I felt that the winds and waves would aid me in reaching 
the mainland. 

About nine o'clock that night, after begging him for 
a few more minutes and telling him that there was no 
danger from the sharks, as they had gone into deep 
water, he assisted me to the port hole, and raised the 
heavy wooden hinged window. With my crutches only 
to aid me, I plunged into the dark boiling waters, clad 
only in my hospital underwear, and was driven forward 
between Beaufort and James's Island, toward Poca- 
taligo River. 

The night was very dark, and I could see the lights at 
Hilton Head and on the vessels in the offing, as I would 
rise on the crest of a wave. I made but little exertion 
to keep afloat, and as the waves and wind drove me 
forward, I felt my strength and will power increase, and 
a sense of freedom came to cheer me. All night I was 
floating, and I drifted into a marshy, sawgrass channel. 
When the tide turned against the wind, I rested myself 
on my crutches by grasping the tussocks of sawgrass 
with them and holding on. I could not touch the bot- 
tom, nor could I raise myself clear of the water. The 



^58 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

half frozen rain beat in my face all night and the air 
was so cold that I only exposed my face to it, and kept 
my body as deep as possible in the warm sea water, 
which here was tempered by the Gulf Stream. 

When daylight came, I could not see anything but the 
tall sawgrass around me, and as the tide changed shore- 
ward, I followed it slowly through the marsh grass, 
avoiding the open water, and keeping as invisible as 
possible. The second night the winds died down and the 
stars came out ; the slosh of the sea lessened, and I would 
anchor amid the tussocks of grass when the tide was 
outward bound, and float with it when it went shoreward. 



CHAPTER XXI 

At Roper Hospital at Charleston — Reply to accusation of 
appropriating to my own use supplies sent to prisoners 
by me — Spend Christmas holidays at Montgomery — As- 
signed to duty around Petersburg — Rendered cripple for 
life. 

On the morning of the second day, about ten o'clock, 
I saw thf* nainland but a few hundred feet away. All 
fatigue vtv.s banished, as my eyes caught sight of this 
longed-for goal, and with my crutches under me I 
turned on my back and headed with all my strength for 
the shore. I grounded near the mouth of a " rice flume," 
and the levee had to be climbed. It was a terrible strug- 
gle to reach the top of it, but when I did so I was amply 
rewarded, for there, stretched out before me, was a 
panorama that sent a thrill into my wasted frame. I 
could see the Confederate flag waving above some tents 
not half a mile away, and I could see a train of cars 
passing near the point. Down the levee, both to my 
right and left, I could see mounted pickets. 

I took an inventory of myself; the sawgrass had 
nearly robbed me of my scant prison hospital under- 
clothing, and my whole body was scarified by the sharp 
teeth of this seagrass. I felt the gnawings of hunger 
and a craving for water, and just under me, on the op- 
posite side of the levee, was a ditch full of it. I rolled 
down the bank to it, and dipping my hands in, I tasted 
and found it cold and fresh. I bent down and stuck my 
lips in, and for a minute I drank all that I could hold. 
As I drew back I was challenged by a mounted Confed- 
erate picket. I was too weak to rise on my crutches and 
was shivering with the cold. The picket saw this and 
called for the corporal of the guard, and in a few 
minutes I was in the hands of my own people. They 
put an overcoat and some blankets on me and on a 
stretcher they carried me to camp, and then, closely 
covered, I was borne to the station house at Pocataligo 

239 



260 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

and placed near a warm fire, and given a cup of strong 
coffee, which restored warmth to my body. 

A surgeon examined me and administered some res- 
torative, and in an hour or two I began to feel return- 
ing vitality. I asked who was in command of the post 
and was informed that Gen. N. G. Evans held the posi- 
tion. I asked if I could see him, and in a few minutes 
he came to my bunk and I made myself known. We con- 
versed about the battle of Leesburg and other incidents, 
and I gave him an account of our prisoners on Morris 
Island, and at Beaufort and Hilton Head. He sent 
me a warm suit of underwear and a uniform, and for- 
warded me at once to the Roper hospital at 
Charleston. 

I reached there that evening, and on the fifteenth of 
December I got out of my bunk and sat around in the 
room ; on the sixteenth, I walked several hundred yards 
down the street, and saw several of our men who had 
landed on exchange from Beaufort the day before. The 
meeting was a pleasant one, and the past was like a 
dream. They told me my name was on the list of those 
who were chosen for exchange, and that they wondered 
why I was not on the boat with them. Two of them, 
Capt. J. W. Greer, of the 4th Georgia, and Capt. A. H. 
Farrar, of the 13th Mississippi, accompanied me back 
to the hospital. 

Ilhe morning papers of the 16th of December had a 
card, signed by five of the officers whom I had selected to 
accompany me to the old church at Beaufort on parole, 
in which they stated that I had appropriated and sold 
for my own use all the stores and supplies generously 
donated to the Morris Island prisoners by the ladies and 
citizens of Charleston, instead of giving them to the 
prisoners. That I had had an ample supply of tobacco 
and various delicacies still in my hands when I was sent 
to the hospital at Hilton Head. 

I answered this in the evening papers, giving details 
of the whole transaction, and calling on the provost 
marshal, to whom these donations had been originally 
consigned, and reciting that they were not allowed by 
the Yankee flag of truce officer to accompany me on 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 261 

my return, but were left In the train on which I had been 
sent to Pocatahgo the morning of my return to prison ; 
that only my individual stores, that I had paid my own 
money for, were allowed on the flag of truce boat. 

At the same time I sent Lieutenant Harrolson and 
Capt. J. J. Andrews of Gen. P. D. Roddey's staff, to 
hunt these officers up, and direct them to apologize in 
the next morning's papers, and withdraw the charges, or 
they must meet me at six o'clock on James's Island and 
at sun-up settle the same at the muzzle of a gun, or the 
point of a saber or rapier. 

Two of them came out in a card the next day and 
apologized, and said that they had learned from the 
provost marshal and from the railroad authorities that 
none of the stores were sent by me or had ever been 
forwarded until long after my departure ; that 
they had been forwarded to Morris Island and turned 
over to the prisoners, and that they had seen the re- 
ceipts for the tobacco, potatoes, etc. Three refused 
to retract. I sent each of them a separate challenge, 
and they accepted, naming six-shooters as the weapons 
of their choice. 

Captains Andrews and Sharp, the latter our naval 
ordnance officer in Charleston, and Lieutenant Charles 
Harrolson accompanied me to the island, and at sun-up 
two of the three put in their appearance. One left the 
city that night and I have never heard a word from 
him since. 

I took my place as time was called, and the seconds 
took theirs. At the word I sent a bullet crashing into 
my opponent's heart, and his pistol went off as the ball 
struck him. In a few moments I was ready for the 
second encounter, and as the word was given I tore 
his pistol hand to pieces, shattering the stock, render- 
ing his gun and arm forever useless. 

We returned to the city, and getting my transporta- 
tion and a furlough from General Hardee I left on 
the first train for Montgomery, Ala., where I wanted 
to spend the Christmas holidays with my cousins. Major 
and Mrs. A. D. Banks. 

I refrain from making pubHc the names of these 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

officers who treated me so shabbily and who forced me 
to a duel. I do this out of my love and friendship 
for every man who wore the gray, and out of respect 
for their families ; but if any are curious enough they 
can find their names and verify the statements here 
made by examining the files of the Charleston papers 
of this date in the public library of Charleston, as 
did some friends a few years since at our reunion in 
that city. 

Upon leaving Augusta, Ga., a Mrs. Morrison, whose 
husband was wounded and in the hospital at Columbus, 
Ga., was placed under my protection, to escort to her 
destination. This I did under very adverse circum- 
stances, over broken bridges and swollen streams, by 
army wagons and on foot at times, followed by negroes 
carrying her trunk. But by dint of perseverance and 
indomitable will power we landed safely in Columbus, 
and she was with her husband and friends. 

I reached Montgomery, Ala., and ate Christmas 
dinner with Major Banks and Cousin Virginia and the 
two children, Mary and Tommy. I spent two weeks 
here, then went on to Jackson, Miss., and spent the 
rest of my furlough with my father at Belvidere, and 
visiting congenial neighbors in the country surrounding. 
At the expiration of my furlough I returned to Vir- 
ginia, reported to General Lee and was assigned to 
duty around Petersburg. Here I remained, doing head- 
quarters service, until the 27th day of March, when 
I was wounded in the right ankle and rendered a cripple 
for life, 

I was furloughed and given permission to cross the 
Mississippi River and remain until I was able to resume 
duty. I left on the 29th of March and reached Selma, 
Ala., on the 12th of April. Wilson's raiders were 
in front of that city. I met my brother as I was going 
to a hospital to have my wound dressed, and he went 
with me. In the battle with Wilson I rode into the 
fight and was again wounded. My brother and one 
of the men held me on the horse as we swam the river 
and made our escape. 



CHAPTER XXII 

Lee's surrender — Refused a parole — Go to Yazoo Valley — 
Make contract to gin cotton for Dr. Jiggets — Before 
the Grand Jury at Yazoo City. 

We reached Meridian, Miss., a short time after, and 
heard of Lee's surrender. The Yankees, under General 
E. R. S. Canby, were near by, and the command we 
were with was here paroled. But after my papers were 
examined, General Canby sent me word that he had 
orders not to parole me, as I had been wounded in a 
fight before I was exchanged, and while I was only on 
parole. I knew that this was a lie, and the general 
said that if I would report in person to him he would 
give me the freedom of the Federal camp. I wrote, 
on the back of his note, and told him that I preferred 
the freedom of the woods to that of a Yankee camp. 

That evening, with two led horses, two of us started 
for Jackson, Miss., and rode all night, spelling our 
horses every hour or so, and by ten o'clock a. m., 
we were in the suburbs of that city. Here I found a 
Colonel Risdon, the paroling officer, and with a squad 
of Ross's Texans I applied for a parole, when I was 
politely informed that they had orders not to parole 
a man of my name. 

I asked if I was the only man in the Confederate 
army of that name, as I knew a dozen men who bore 
the name of Fontaine, in various parts of our army ; 
that I had a father and two brothers, not far off. 

He said, " Well, wait until the rush is over, and I 
will examine into the merits of the case. I'm too busy 
just now." 

I stepped out and with a body of Ross's men rode out 
to their camp, in an old field four miles from my father's 
residence, avoiding the Yankee pickets on the main 
roads leading out of Jackson. 

263 



M4< MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

I was at a Mrs. Ross's one day and she informed me 
that she had invited Colonel Risdon, the agent of the 
Freedmen's Bureau, out to dine with her that day, and 
that she wished that I would stay and help entertain 
them. I told her that I was in camp with Ross's men, 
preparing to leave for Texas in a few days, and that 
Colonel Risdon had refused to parole me, and it was 
dangerous for me to put myself in his power. She 
said that she would send and get some of the boys to 
be with me, and that he need not know that it was me, as 
her brother, Green Skipwath, was away, and she could 
introduce me as her brother. 

I stayed, and met the agent and the Colonel and an- 
other officer. They came with an escort of some half- 
dozen negro soldiers. She had the contracts with her 
negroes signed and everything arranged. 

After they were gone my negro came to the door 
and told me that the negroes in the yard had told one 
of the Yankee negroes that he had heard his mistrees 
and I talking that morning, and that I had told her that 
I had not been paroled, and that I was going with the 
Texas men to Texas. 

I did not feel comfortable' after this news reached me. 
I went inside and told Mrs. Ross my predicament, 
mounted ray horse and rode back to the camp and asked 
the boys if they would stand by me if the negroes were 
sent out to take me. They agreed, to a man. 

The next day I was again at Mrs. Ross's, and my 
horse was hitched in the back yard when my boy, 
George, came hurriedly in and said, " Master, the 
Yankees are coming, and they are all niggers." 

I hurriedly mounted my horse and rode in a gallop 
out the back way to our camp, which was in the ad- 
joining field of Mr. George Boddie. 

About an hour after my arrival we saw them coming 
and we held a hurried consultation. All the officers 
of the regiment were absent. I went inside a tent and 
got my arms ready, and every man, some three hundred 
in all, was soon ready. 

They came up, under command of a negro sergeant, 
and dismounted on the opposite side of a large gully 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 265 

that lay directly in front of our camp. Our guard 
halted them and asked what they wanted. 

The sergeant was very polite, saluted, and said, " We 
was informed dat you has a Major Fountain's in your 
camp, and de Colonel he done saunt me to bring him to 
Jackson." 

" There's no such man here," one of the boys re- 
plied. " No such man belongs to our command." 

" De Colonel done told me to search ebry tent, and 
not to come back till I done found him." 

" Well, come on and search," one of the men said. 

With that they fastened their horses, and as the 
whole posse, some thirty in all, scrambled down into 
the ditch and were ascending the side next to us I looked 
down at them, and one negro, who knew me and lived 
in the neighborhood, and formerly belonged to Mr. Ben 
Whitfield, looked up and said, " Dar he is, dat's him." 

All these negroes deserted right there, and they took 
refuge in the bottom of that ditch, and the banks, like 
the walls of the Red Sea, rolled over and hid them from 
all prying eyes, forever. We hid all signs of their de- 
parture in the ditch, and a rain that night aided our 
efforts. 

I spent several days in the neighborhood, listening 
to the gossip, and then went into the wilds of the Yazoo 
Valley. 

I met a Dr. Jiggets, who resided near Livingston, in 
Madison County, Miss., and who had some three hun- 
dred bales of cotton in pens, to be ginned, and I took 
the contract to gin this. But circumstances forced 
me to leave the country for a while and hide. This I 
did, and on my return, when all was quiet, I fulfilled 
my agreement with the doctor. I hired teams and 
hands, put an old gin of his in repair, and hauled and 
ginned and baled some two hundred and eighty-seven 
heavy bales, some weighing six hundred pounds or more, 
of which I got one-third. 

The trouble was that the country was full of dis- 
banded soldiers and deserters from both armies, and 
they would steal all the cotton that was ginned that 
they could lay their hands on, claiming that it was 



266 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

" Confederate cotton," sold by the owners originally 
to the Confederate Government. 

None was ever sold to our government until it was 
ginned and baled, as the government would not receive 
cotton in the seed, unginned. 

As I ginned this seed cotton I hauled it direct from 
the gin to Satartia, on the Yazoo River, and shipped 
it by boat to Vicksburg. I took " bills of lading " 
from the boat, and the boat brought back receipts from 
the storage warehouse. I was constantly warned by 
parties that I would some day be caught on my way 
from the gin to Satartia, and my cotton confiscated 
by some of these restless, roving men who had no re- 
spect for law and order. I always attended my wagons 
on their trips to and from the landing at Satartia. 

I used to gin from twenty to thirty bales before I 
made a trip to the landing, and I would sit on the front 
wagon and go into town with them. I was constantly 
on the watch for these cotton thieves, and carried a 
large double-barreled shotgun, belonging to a Mrs. 
Lewis, who lived in Dover, Yazoo County, and I had 
my drivers armed with six-shooters, and two other 
negroes accompanying each wagon. Often Louis or 
Dave Jiggets, sons of Dr. Jiggets, or some known 
friend would be with me, so it was not easy to take 
my cotton. 

One bright, moonlight night, about midnight, I had 
about twenty bales piled around the press, which was an 
old tall, wooden screw, with long sweeping levers, like an 
exaggerated " A," to which were attached the mules that 
turned the screw down upon the lint, compressing it 
into the bale box. As I was standing near this press 
I could hear the rumble of wagons in the road leading 
from Scott's Ferry to Satartia, about a half mile north 
of the gin. I had seven or eight men at work at the 
gin stands and four nearly grown boys driving the 
mules that ran the gin stands. 

The night was very clear and the moon shining 
brightly. About midnight I heard the big gate open, 
and the wagons coming toward the gin. I ran into 
the gin house, stopped the ginners, and putting them 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 267 

with their guns down where the mules were in a circle, 
facing the approaching wagons, I instructed them not 
to fire until they could see me shoot from the press. I 
hurried out and took my stand at one of the uprights, 
in front of the cotton bales, and waited developments. 
I had not long to wait before I saw several men in 
front of three six-mule wagons approaching along the 
narrow ridge road, between two deep gullies. There 
was not room for a wagon to turn or pass another 
in this narrow way. I waited until they were within 
fifty yards of me, then I halted the three men, who 
were in advance of the wagons, and asked what they 
wanted. 

They replied, " We have come for that cotton, as 
it is Confederate cotton, and we are going to take it." 

I replied that this was private cotton that I was gin- 
ning from the seed ; that all Confederate cotton was 
ginned and baled before the government received it, and 
before the surrender ; and that if they got it it would 
be over my dead body. 

One of them said, " You are a liar, and you know it ; 
so damn you, take that ! " 

A pistol flash followed his words, and the splinters 
from the post flew in my face, from the impact of the 
bullet, not missing me more than an inch or so. 

I raised my old shotgun, with twenty number five 
buckshot in each barrel, and sent the two loads into 
their ranks, killing two of them and one horse, and 
wounding the other. The echo of my gun had not died 
away before my negroes from the circle under the gin 
stands poured a perfect hail of buckshot in among the 
drivers and the squad of men in the rear of the wagons, 
and I opened with my six-shooters on them. The driv- 
ers, who were all negroes, jumped from their seats, and 
the mules got into a fearful tangle, and we got every 
one of them. The men in the rear broke at full speed 
and never again came in sight. 

I went up to the wounded man and found him in great 
agony. I had him carried to the house, staunched the 
flow of blood and had him cared for as best I could, 
and placed him under the guard of one of my negroes. 



268 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

I had the captured mules released from their entangle- 
ments and placed in the stables. 

At daylight I had a letter written and sent a negro 
mounted on a mule to carry it to the provost marshal 
at Canton. I also sent a note to Dr. Jiggets, telling 
him of the situation. 

My negro had ridden but a short distance down the 
road when he met Louis Jiggets, and with him the 
provost marshal and about thirty soldiers. I made 
my report to the provost, and he took the mules, my 
wounded man, several of the negroes and myself, and 
carried us all to Vicksburg that day, as that was his 
destination. He reported the affair to General Slocum. 
I was questioned very closely by the General, and after 
examining the negroes thoroughly, he made me a pres- 
ent of one of the wagons, and six of the best mules, 
and sent us back to our gin work. We drove back over 
the same route the next day. The prisoner that I had 
shot was hung in Vicksburg a short time after. He 
was a robber and a deserter, by the name of Brooks, 
and had gained quite a notoriety. 

I finished ginning without any other trouble, and 
when the last bale was shipped I went down to meet 
Captain Page, of the steamboat " Emma No. 2," with 
whom I had done all my shipping. I saw notices posted 
at various places on the road, that I was going to be 
shot at sight. These notices were signed, " By order 
of the Swamp Tigers." I stopped and wrote on each 
one a request to keep out of my way, as I did not wish 
to hurt any of them, but that I was ready at all times 
to defend myself, and had plenty of friends to aid me. 

A mile or so from Satartia, on the morning I was 
to meet Captain Page, a large raccoon ran across the 
road in front of me, and as he was climbing a tree I 
drew my pistol and fired, killing him instantly. As I 
went to reload it, I found that the main spring was 
broken, and it was of no further service until I could 
have it mended. I only had a small derringer pocket 
pistol to fall back upon. 

I rode into Satartia, and the " Emma No. 2 " was at 
the landing. I went aboard and Captain Page took 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 269 

me up to his room and handed me $7,500 in very large 
bills, most of them $1,000 ones. These I put in an 
inner pocket of my vest. He also gave me a watch, 
with a long, old-fashioned gold chain, to be worn around 
the neck. This watch belonged to Mrs. Lewis, of Dover, 
in Yazoo County, and had been sent off for repairs. 
The boat was on its way to Vicksburg, and T gave the 
Captain my pistol, to have the main spring replaced, 
and to be left with Johnson & Co., in Satartia, upon 
the return trip. I tried to borrow one from him, to 
replace mine, in the interim, but he only had one. I 
tried Captain R. G. Johnson, and several others, but 
did not succeed. 

I spent the day in Satartia, dressed in an entire new 
suit from head to toe. I folded my old Confederate 
hat into a small bundle, and placed it, with two pounds 
of candy, in my haversack. Dressed in a bran new 
suit, with an extra heavy overcoat and a fine white hat, 
at four o'clock that evening I mounted my horse and 
rode off up the river road toward Dover. 

I stopped at the W. A. Gale place and took supper 
with an old friend, John McCutchin, who was in charge 
of the place. After supper I passed on up the hill 
overlooking the landing at Liverpool. Here the roads 
form a Greek delta, one going to Liverpool, one to 
Dover, and the other the regular Yazoo City and Sa- 
tartia road. I passed at once into the Dover road. 
Nearing the narrow hills that border Anderson's Creek, 
the cane lies close to the trail or road, and two wagons 
can scarcely pass. When at this point I heard the 
trampling of horses behind me. I took my little der- 
ringer pistol from my pocket, cocked it and put my 
right hand with it in my overcoat pocket, and held it 
there. As the horses gained on me, I made up my 
mind that if they were friends I could lower the ham- 
mer and leave it there, as I shook hands with them, and 
they would never know that I had ever had any hostile 
intentions. 

As they came in view I saw that one was riding a 
gray, and the other a dark-colored horse. I thought 
that I saw a pistol in the hands of the man on the dark 



270 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

horse, so, with my eyes glancing back over my right 
shoulder, I kept him in view. They came within ten feet 
of me, and the one on the gray spurred forward and 
said, " Where are you going? " 

I did not reply at once, as I did not like the ring of 
his voice, and it was unknown to me. I turned half 
round in my saddle, so as to face him, and as I did so, 
he spurred right up against me, his knee almost as 
high as my belt, and I saw that he was a powerful 
built man, weighing about two hundred or more pounds, 
and wearing a short peajacket, or cavalry uniform. 

As he almost touched me, he said in a gruff tone, " I 
want that watch ! " 

I made up my mind at once to kill him, and leap from 
my saddle and secure his pistol, which he held level with 
my head as he uttered his command. I instantly threw 
my left hand upward, as his knee grazed my side, and 
struck his pistol, and with my right hand I pressed my 
derringer above his belt and fired. My little mule gave 
a tremendous jump, and came very near dropping me 
on my back in the road. I grabbed the bridle as 
quickly as possible, and gave a hard jerk on the bit, 
and put my whole strength on it, and the reins snapped 
in two like burnt threads, and my mule dashed away like 
the wind, upsetting all plans to leap and secure the 
pistol of my would-be robber. 

The force of my derringer rammed against the rob- 
ber blew him out of his saddle, and his horse was jerked 
around by the bridle as his rider fell. I only had a 
momentary glimpse of this, as my attention was con- 
fined to the movements of my mule. 

I heard a voice exclaim, " Sam, Sam, are you hurt ? " 

In the moment I saw the flash of a pistol, and then 
another, and another, until it seemed a continuous 
shower of bullets were following me. One grazed my 
left ear and clipped a lock of hair from the temple; 
one plowed across my right arm below the elbow, and one 
struck me a blow in the back, which gave me a shock. 

The shower of bullets seemed to lend wings to my 
little mule, and she traveled with a speed I had never 
seen excelled. She dashed across Anderson's Creek and 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 271 

up the hill beyond, and as I came opposite Mr. Lacey's 
the front gate was open, a wagon just going in ; my 
mule followed it and went right up to the gallery. 
Her race of over a mile had almost winded her. I dis- 
mounted as quickly as possible, and one of the boys took 
charge of my mule, and fastened her to the gallery. 

As I came into the light, I looked down and saw that 
my shirt bosom was spattered with blood, as was my hat, 
and blood was trickling from my right arm, but the pain 
was in my back, and I thought I was shot through. 

There were six or seven men sitting around the fire, 
smoking, as supper was just over, and the table not 
yet cleared away. I spoke to them and they asked me 
what was the matter ; what all that firing meant. I told 
them and asked them if they would not go back with 
me and help kill or capture the gang. I explained 
that it would be easy to do, as they would not be looking 
for me to return, and that we could go afoot, make 
no noise, creep up, and surround them, and kill or cap- 
ture the whole band, and thus rid the country of them. 

I explained how I had killed one of their number by 
the name of Sam, but they refused, and said that they 
had had enough fighting, and didn't want any more. 

I reloaded my little derringer, and asked if they 
would lend me a six-shooter, but they declined. I ex- 
amined my wounds, and found only a scratch on my 
right arm below the elbow, a bruised place above it, 
and a small tip of my left ear bleeding. There was a 
bullet hole through my coat sleeve above the elbow, 
but it had not touched the skin. As I undid the belt, 
to examine the wound in my back, the bullet dropped 
to the floor from the clothing, and I found only a 
bruised spot where it had lodged in the clothing. The 
ball had passed through nine folds of my Confederate 
hat, made dust almost of the two pounds of candy and 
thus broken its force. The blood on my shirt front 
and hat was from the robber, and had been blown all 
over me with fragments of his intestines. 

After bathing and bandaging my arm I went into 
the dining room and ate a biscuit and some potatoes 
and drank a glass of milk, came back into the sitting 



272 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

room, smoked and talked a while, and renewed my ef- 
forts to get the men to go back with me and capture 
the band of robbers, but they would not listen to the 
proposition. I procured a candle and went with one 
of the boys and mended my bridle, mounted my mule and 
bade them all good-night, although they insisted on 
my remaining until morning. I felt that it would be 
safer for me to continue that night than to postpone 
my journey for daylight; in fact, I did not feel safe 
with men who were adverse to ridding the country of a 
band of robbers, who spared neither man, woman nor 
child in their raids for gold, or gain, and I knew that I 
would be much safer out in the open, wide awake, and 
trusting to my own resources, so I rode away. 

At two o'clock that night I rode into the yard of 
Mr. W. S. Noble, as I saw lights shining in the house. 
I dismounted and found the family all up, as little 
Willie Noble was quite ill. I related my adventures, 
and Mrs. Noble prepared me some lint and bandages and 
soaked them in boiling tar and turpentine water. After 
dressing my arm I continued my journey on foot to 
Dover, which was about half a mile away. I felt 
strangely safe as I entered my own room, and saw my 
array of guns and pistols all around me. I was soon in 
bed and sound asleep. 

The next morning I ate breakfast at Mrs. Lewis's 
and delivered the watch into her hands and told her 
how the robber had demanded it of me. After break- 
fast I belted on my pistols and mounting my own horse 
I rode over to Dr. Jigget's at Livingston, and turned 
over his share of the money I had in my possession. I 
spent the night there, and the next day, with Louis Jig- 
gets, I rode over to Belvidere and spent a few days 
with my father and his family. 

Upon my return to Dover, in Yazoo County, I was 
summoned by Justice of the Peace Ne Smith to appear 
before the grand jury in Yazoo City. On entering 
the jury room T was certain that I saw men T believed 
to have been in the crowd who attacked me at the gin 
house the night I captured the wagons. I could not 
get this impression out of my mind, and when Mr. Joe 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 273 

Mosely asked me about my encounter at the gin house 
these men left the room. When Mr. Thomas R. Hol- 
loman asked me to relate my encounter with the robbers 
on Anderson Creek hills several others moved out. 

I told them that I believed a part of the jury before 
whom I was summoned belonged to the clique who had 
been terrorizing the citizens between this place and 
Vicksburg; that many of their names had been given 
me by parties, both men and women, who had been held 
up and robbed in the lower part of the county, and 
that though not personally known to me I could give 
their names, which I did, and it created a stir in the 
jury room. 

I then asked them to give me a sheet of paper, and 
I would write a list of all, and attach my oath of af- 
firmation to it. This I did and handed it to the fore- 
man of the jury. It was handed around and read by 
every one present. And from that day to this I have 
never heard any more about the outcome of their in- 
vestigations at that meeting. 

I left the room and Mr. Holloman followed me and 
told me to look out or I might be assassinated on my 
way back to Dover. I told him that I always was pre- 
pared, and would certainly aid the good citizens of 
Yazoo County in ferreting out and bringing to justice 
the lawless element that had broken out among the dis- 
banded armies of both the North and the South, and 
that I wanted it distinctly understood that I was on 
the side of the law-abiding people of the whole county, 
and was at their beck and call, day or night, so long 
as I remained in their midst. 

I felt that these thieves knew that I would not hesi- 
tate to kill, at the slightest provocation, and that I 
was always ready. 

I wound up my business transactions with Dr. Jig- 
gets, and forwarded the proceeds to my old plantation 
home, with orders to my manager to put everything in 
first class condition ; that I expected to return and 
spend the rest of my days in the quietude of my plan- 
tation home on old Caney Creek, in the land of my 
early childhood. But fate decreed otherwise. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

I teach school — My marriage — Make Austin my home — 
The birth of our son — Surveying in Yazoo Valley — 
Retrospection. 

Many of my old-time friends were forced into bank- 
ruptcy, and guardian bonds, that I had signed for these 
friends in the long years before, were thrown upon my 
shoulders at this time, and my home passed from me 
into the hands of strangers, and I was left without a 
dollar or a friend from whom I could borrow. 

I taught school for a while in the Dover neighbor- 
hood, and for a while tried to forget my condition. I 
kept up my rifle and pistol practice, and on Saturdays 
I would hunt or visit Yazoo City or some congenial 
neighborhood. But I was restless, and for a while con- 
templated returning to the life of a sailor, and spend- 
ing my last days on the wide waves of the restless sea, 
as they were more in unison than my spirits. 

While these thoughts held their revels in my brain, 
I met, at a wedding in the neighborhood, the young 
lady who had been so kind to me upon my escape from 
Vicksburg, on the night of the surrender from that 
terrible siege. From that wedding feast I returned to 
my bachelor quarters, a new being. I determined to 
change my plans and link my fate with hers, be it for 
weal or woe. 

I entered into the struggle with all the vim that I 
possessed; and on the twentieth day of June, 1866, 
the anniversary of that terrible day and night when I 
pillowed my head on a dead Yankee on the battlefield 
of Strasburg just four years before, I led her to 
the altar, and made her mine forever. 

In the following January we took up our abode 
in the city of Austin, in Texas, and we spent many 
happy days among the scenes of my early boyhood. 
I was a recording clerk, and then a draughtsman, in 

274 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 275 

the land office under Captain Stephen Crosby, until 
the United States Government, by arbitrary power, dis- 
placed the local authorities and put carpet-baggers in 
our places. 

I was disfranchised, and moved down into a cedar 
brake, about six miles above Bastrop on the Colorado 
River. Here I taught school for a while, and here my 
wife presented me with a splendid boy, and together 
we spent many happy days in our little cabin home, 
far from the haunts and sounds of the busy outside 
world. 

The negro " Loyal Leagues " and their white social 
equals harassed the citizens, and kept every community 
in a stir. Our cedar brake was a haven for those whom 
the league were banded against. When the negroes 
would enter it, to bring some accused one before a 
negro justice or a Freedmen's Bureau tribunal, they 
invariably failed to report back again, and were marked 
as deserters, and when the white soldiers were sent, they 
reported the cedar brake as deserted and without an in- 
habitant. 

Frequent riots would occur and clashes between the 
negroes and the citizens, and the slaughter of the 
negroes was invariably the result. 

This kind of life became irksome, as I had a family 
now to care for, so I determined to return to my wife's 
old home and show our boy ; to leave the cedar brakes 
and wind-swept prairies behind us, and make our home 
in the jungle wilds of the Yazoo in the Mississippi Delta. 
We returned, and since that day we have made our 
home where the long gray moss, with its weird shroud, 
covers the hanging branches of the cypress, or out in 
the broken, cane-covered hills of Short Creek, or in 
the city of the Yazoo, with congenial friends. 

For fourteen years I lived in the county, and was 
the county surveyor, and for thirty-six years I have 
aided in the surveying and laying out of the various 
lines of railroads that now traverse the Yazoo Missis- 
sippi Valley. My feet have trod upon every square 
mile from Horn Lake on the north, to the mouth of 
the Yazoo River above Vicksburg, on the south. 



^76 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

In the winter of 1888 we moved into the heart of 
the " Yazoo Valley," and built our home in the midst 
of a dense canebrake, surrounded by a beautiful holly 
grove, and near the heart of a large clump of mounds 
and ruins of the ancient mound builders. In these 
wilds, where the howhng of the wolves, the cries of the 
wild cats and the scream of an occasional panther could 
be heard, a superabundance of deer, turkeys, squir- 
rels, and an occasional bear, with the aid of our dogs 
and guns, gave us the choicest viands of the chase for 
our larder. We spent several years amid these wild 
forest solitudes, on Porter's Bayou, just below the 
head of Indian Bayou. Here, in this primal abode of 
nature, my friends from distant climes would visit us, 
and renew the memories and recollections of by-gone 
days. 

In November, 1893, an early fire robbed us of all 
our household possessions, and destroyed all the relics 
accumulated from my world-wide travels. After the 
fire, we moved to our present home, in the little village 
of Lyon, and came out from the sylvan wilds into the 
great stream of progressive civilization. 

And here, with my children and grandchildren around 
me, I sit in my great armchair, on the shaded gallery, 
with the balmy sea-bom zephyrs, fresh from the Mexic 
Sea, fanning my brow ; with the smoke curling up from 
my old meerschaum pipe, fragrant with the perfume 
of perique, I dream and retrospect. 

Through the vales of memory I am again on the 
vast, wind-swept plains of the west, a wild, naked Com- 
anche Indian boy. Again I touch the frozen shores 
of far-away Greenland and see the vast ice fields and 
mountains wrapped in their garbs of eternal snow and 
ice, gleaming in the ever varying hues of the grand 
aurora borealis, that vast arc light, produced by the 
meeting of the positive and negative currents of elec- 
tricity, flowing upward from the equator, and meeting 
in battle array over the north pole, forming the sword 
of the Cherubim placed by Almighty God at the gates 
of the Garden of Eden to guard the way and warn man 
from trespassing upon this forbidden spot. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 277 

I hear again the thunder of the guns at Vera Cruz. 
I see again the beauties of the distant isles of the Pa- 
cific and Indian Oceans. I catch glimpses of the snow- 
clad peaks of the Andes and Himalayan Mountains. I 
hear again the awful crash of the exploding shells as 
I lay buried under the debris of the Malakoff, and I 
jsee the smoke of the guns at Balaklava and of Inker- 
man. 

And again with my Bedouin Arabs, I cross the dead 
and parched sands of Sahara, with its wonderful mirages 
and desert horrors. And there looms into my memory's 
vision the great Chinese wall with its granite towers, 
stretching across wide plains, and deep foaming rivers, 
and ascending almost inaccessible mountain heights, 
guarding for twenty-five hundred miles the vast Mon- 
golian Empire, built by people who were gray with age 
and knowledge before the foundation stones of the 
Egyptian pyramids were laid. 

I glide along over the snow-covered steppes of Siberia, 
behind swift ponies, or the fleet-footed reindeer, I see 
the flat marshes of the shores around the capital of the 
Czar ; the grand old castles and gloomy palaces and 
lovely vineyards and gardens of Germany, France, and 
England; the wonderful paintings and statuary of the 
fairyland of Italy, the vast churches and grand cathe- 
drals that are scattered along the shores of the Mediter- 
ranean Sea. I hear the growl of the wild beasts of 
prey swelling up from the jungle wilds of Asia and the 
unexplored regions of Africa, and anon I catch the 
gleam of the yellow eye of the royal tiger, amid the 
tangled bamboo glens of Bengal, India. The deep bass 
growl and jarring purr of the tawny-maned lion of 
eastern Africa and the loud, hoarse trumpeting of the 
elephant seemingly swell upon the air. 

Amid the dense forests of the Amazon I see twined 
around the trunks and limbs of trees, the huge vine-like 
forms of the boa constrictor, and listen to the chatter- 
ings of the wildly excited monkey tribes, as they dis- 
cover their apparent enemy. Again I stray along the 
deep, gold-laden canons of the Rio Madre di Dios that 
flows from beneath the beautiful Lake Titicaca, that 



ms MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

rests and nestles at the feet of the snow-capped vol- 
canoes in the Andean chain of mountains. I hear the 
soft sweet music of the dark-eyed maidens, as they touch 
the strings of their guitars, floating out on the still 
waters of Lake Managua. 

Anon the visions drift away into the dreamy lands 
unreal, and I am again amid the shouting legions, hear 
the crash of musketry, the deep diapason of the guns 
hurling their missiles of death into the living masses of 
the charging hosts of Grant on the serrated hills of 
Vicksburg. 

I see the folds of the Southern Cross with its white 
stars shining brightly above us as we charge into the 
hell of fire at Spottsylvania's " bloody angle," and the 
red fields of death, covered with the bleeding carcasses 
of men and horses. I hear the low, sad wails of the 
dying, and the death rattle in their throats. 

And as the night spreads her shadowy mantle and 
the pale moon looks down on the red sands of the battle- 
field and the soft summer breezes kiss my forehead, my 
pipe slips from my fingers and rests upon the floor, and 
a sweet voice says, " Grandpa, come to dinner," and 
the past is in the infinite shades of the eternal past. 



LECTURES ON 
AMERICA: THE OLD WORLD" 
AND 
OTHER SUBJECTS 



AMERICA: THE OLD WORLD 

Situation of the Garden of Eden — The glories of the 
aurora borealis — North America undoubtedly the region 
of the earliest civilization. 

Where did God first plant the flora and fauna of 
earth, and where was the Garden of Eden? In answer- 
ing these great questions, that have puzzled theologians 
and scientists throughout long ages, I shall endeavor 
to give you a clear and unclouded answer, and prove it 
by indisputable facts ; and I shall be guided by my 
own close, personal observations and explorations, and 
not by any other authority. Long years ago, when 
but a boy, I conceived the idea that the Garden of Eden 
must have been planted in some region where the foot 
of man has never since trod, and the question arose, 
" Where was that spot .? " The answer came, " It must 
have been at the poles of the earth." These questions 
came to me when I was but a youth, cruising on a whal- 
ing ship in that cold northern region of eternal ice and 
snow. 

In the winter of 1845-6 we were frozen in close to 
an island in latitude 79° 10'' north and longitude 70° 
40' west, and on the 17th of July, 1846, we were an- 
chored on the lee side of a grounded iceberg in latitude 
74° 48'' north and longitude 66° 13' west, and were en- 
gaged in cutting and trying out the oil of several large 
whales that we had in tow. While sheltered behind this 
berg the vessels Erebus and Terror of Sir John Frank- 
lin's fleet came in sight and " spoke " us, asking about 
the seas and islands to the north and west of us, where 
we had spent the winter. We gave them all the infor- 
mation that we had on the subject, they copied our log, 
and we gave them a bountiful supply of oil for fuel and 
lights. 

I remember that they told us our ship had penetrated 

281 



282 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

farther north at that time than any other that they had 
a record of. After leaving us, they were in sight, going 
a httle north of west, for fully twenty-four hours, and 
I think that we were the last that ever saw any of the 
crew of Sir John Franklin. 

As I have said before, it was while cruising in this far 
off region of external snow and ice, in my budding man- 
hood, that the idea entered my brain that it was here, 
in this cold bleak clime, that plant, bird, beast, and man 
first had their habitat. On every point of land my feet 
trod I saw vast quantities of the bones of great saurian 
monsters, and those of the monkey and elephant tribes, 
as well as of tropical birds, all in a fossilized state. I 
also saw the flora of the tropics, the orange, banana, 
and great palm leaves, all of gigantic size, frozen into 
stone. The fern leaves were from ten to forty feet in 
length, the oranges more than a foot in diameter, and 
the bananas larger and longer than a man's arm. 

The great saurian monsters, sleeping under the 
" drift " of the " flora," and the great pachyderms 
could have lived in almost boiling water. The anthro- 
poids were of gigantic size. I had a femur bone of one 
of these creatures that measured forty-nine inches in 
length ; this would make the man-ape sixteen feet in 
height, as we now calculate sizes. These Anthropoids 
giganti had the dolichokephalic skulls and brain pans 
of the present negroes of the Congo and Upper Nile 
regions of Africa. 

While viewing these monsters of the flora and fauna 
of that icy clime, I became satisfied that while they 
lived and where they lived, the present race of mankind, 
of the mesokephalic skull and clean white bones, could 
not have existed, for the lands were too hot. Well did 
I perceive that these monsters could not have lived amid 
the snows and chilly winds that howl around their fos- 
silized remains. 

On those bleak, barren, ice-bound shores, under the 
light of an almost eternal day, I examined every plant 
and bone with a keen and critical eye. I scanned every 
feature as they lay in countless thousands around me, 
until I silenced every doubt. Their size, color and com- 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 283 

ponent parts were as familiar to me as my A, B, C's, 
and I tried by every means at hand to compute their 
age, but in this I failed. However, I came to the con- 
clusion that while they were on this earth, the man of 
the Eden Garden, the man of the " living soul," could 
not have been in existence. They were pre-Adamites 
and aeons of time must have elapsed before the Adam- 
ites could have wandered over the same lands. 

I read daily and memorized every line and verse in 
the " Book of Books," given me by a loving mother's 
hand, from the first line in the Genesis of Moses to the 
building of Solomon's Temple. Again and again did I 
pore over its declarations about creation's dawn, and 
down to the deluge of Noah. Only one line, faint and 
indistinct, seemed to throw any light on the boundless 
sea of dark, unfathomable uncertainty that hedges 
around the description given by Moses, and this was the 
positive assertion that " the world was without form, 
and void." This was a clue, faint and indistinct, yet a 
something to build upon and reason from. 

The clouds, floating in the ether above, were without 
fixed form and were void. The sun, moon and stars were 
all grand globes in the vaults above and below me, and 
were moving in regular defined orbits, obeying some 
great law. I had seen the molten lead poured from the 
towers, without form, and void, and seen it drop through 
space, and fall into the vaults of water below, each a 
globe, a miniature world. I had watched the cooks 
throw their slop water through the port holes out into 
the frozen air, also " without form, and void " ; had seen 
it fall upon the snow and roll away, miniature worlds 
like our own. Every dewdrop clinging to a rose leaf 
or blade of grass ; every bubble blown by a child ; every 
raindrop falling through space, all represent minia- 
ture worlds. 

Here was a solution, pure and simple. I had a found- 
ation on which to construct the vast globe on which we 
live, and breathe. This old earth in the beginning was 
without form, and void, a mass of fiery, liquid matter, 
whirling through space, and the cold ether that fills 
all space compressed it with equal pressure from all 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

sides, just as it does the molten lead poured from the 
shot tower, the bubble blown by a child, and the boiling 
water thrown by the cook from the ship's side. The 
raindrops falling from the void and formless cloud, the 
red molten stars hurtling through illimitable space, are 
all grasped by the same great invisible hand and com- 
pressed into minute or vast globes like our own. 

This pressure fills all space ; it has neither dome nor 
foundation, and is a component part of eternity, be- 
cause it has neither beginning nor end. It stretches be- 
yond the limits of vision and is equal on all sides. Our 
world is in the center of this pressure, and so are all 
other worlds. The sun, moon and stars that hang in 
this great, unfathomable sea of space were all fashioned 
like our dewdrops, or our world, or the bubbles blown 
by the child and are governed by the same laws. How 
plain becomes the other descriptions of creation's dawn. 
" And the spirit of God moved upon the waters." Here 
that great power that holds the universe in place is 
shown, and new and wonderful beauties break upon the 
mind, and give us greater insight into the mysteries of 
nature. 

Is there in our midst a being of plain, common rea- 
son so dense that he does not know that all known sub- 
stances, that are subject to heat, will first begin to cool 
at the points farthest from the heat. Are we not aware 
that all substances in liquid form, when thrown into the 
air, will assume a globular or spheroid form.? Now with 
these facts — for they are facts beyond any cavil or 
doubt — before him, can not any sensible or reasoning 
being see for himself that it was thus our old earth was 
formed.'' Formed, as Moses declares, from a mass, I 
may say, of floating star dust, " without form and 
void " .'' This great mass of molten matter, whirling 
through the boundless ether void, under the binding in- 
fluence of its two great powers, the sun that rules the 
day, and the moon that rules the night, was held by 
these two great luminaries in its present orb. 

Thus in that far off frozen region we translated the 
declarations of Moses. Proofs that this old world was 
once a molten mass were ample. The igneous rocks — 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 286 

medals of God himself — and the great masses of the 
flora and fauna of a tropical clime, resting now on the 
shores of an ice bound region, proved that this was once 
a warmer clime than the tropics of to-day, and that 
when they moved and had their being, the very earth 
itself was hot. 

The more I studied, the more strongly I became con- 
vinced that this northern shore of North America, at 
the north pole, the farthest point from the direct rays 
of the ruling orb of day, as well as at the south pole was 
where our old earth first began to cool. And the older 
I grow and the more I understand nature and nature's 
laws, the more strongly confirmed in this reasonable 
belief I become. 

Now let us look at it in the clear light of unbiased 
reason ; let us review it in its every phase. 

The poles of the earth are farthest from the direct 
rays of the great solar heat of the sun ; that body that 
gives warmth and light to the entire world, and given 
to us by God Himself to govern and rule the earth. 
Hence the poles of this globe are farthest from the sun, 
and would naturally begin to cool first. As soon as it 
was cool enough at the poles, God would plant there 
the flora and fauna of the earth. When I make the 
declaration that it was at the north pole that grass, 
birds, trees and animals first had their habitat, nature 
and reason sustain my declaration, for there is no land 
at the south pole. The continent of South America 
only extends to Cape Horn and the continent of Africa 
to the Cape of Good Hope; a boundless ocean rolls be- 
tween these capes and the south pole, and another ocean 
rolls between the continents of Europe and Asia and the 
north pole. It was upon this North American continent 
alone that God first planted the flora and fauna of earth, 
and only on this continent does dry land exist on which 
God could plant the flora and fauna of earth ; for they 
do not belong in the water. These facts are so self- 
evident that I need scarce pursue this argument 
further. 

Thus you can see that there was no place on the 
European or Asiatic continent extending into the re- 



286 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

gions of the north pole, on which plant or animal life 
could exist. The continent of North America alone 
presented the conditions necessary for the abode of 
plant and animal life, elsewhere all was a boundless 
ocean, uninhabitable to plant, bird, beast or animal, and 
it was undoubtedly upon the North American shore, at 
the north pole, that the first germs of life sprang into 
existence. As the earth cooled, plant and animal life 
grew and prospered, and followed the cooling earth 
down toward the equator. All this took place in the 
early tertiary period of the earth's creation. 

As the earth became more cooled, the places of these 
tertiary birds, beasts, plants and animals, were taken 
by a more intelligent genus of animals and plants be- 
longing to a cooler clime; and those of the quaternary 
period became existent ; then came the intelligent anthro- 
poids, and last, man. These followed in the wake of the 
croaking, blind, clammy, thick-skinned, heavy shelled 
saurians of the hot age. As the earth cooled, a greater 
variety of the flora permeated the land, and lent their 
beauties to the landscape, carpeting it with changing 
verdure. 

In viewing those far-off^ regions through the dim 
glasses of the present over a lapse of sixty years, much 
has been forgotten of course, yet by brightening my 
memory from the observations of Kane, Greely, and 
others of a more recent date, they but fix the facts as I 
found them while upon the ground in person. 

Let us look at that region when it was fresh from the 
hand of the Creator, and inhabited by primeval man. 
How beautiful it was ! See it as the medals of nature 
reveal it in the days when its early, man-like inhabitants 
roamed its hills and valleys as shown to Moses, and 
spoken of in the sixth era after creation's dawn. Take 
it by eras in rotation. The first era after it was " with- 
out form and void," it assumed its globular phase and 
hissing, seething, whirling through the vast ether vor- 
texes ; it lights the distant dome of Heaven with sun- 
like radiance. 

It would take an aeon of time for this great blazing, 
molten mass to cool, compress, harden and shrink to its 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 287 

present 8000 miles of diameter. I repeat, it would take 
an aeon of time for the outer crust of the great globe 
to cool and shrink to its present diameter of 8000 miles. 
In the second era, when the hot lands " heaved amain," 
and great chasms opened, and hills, mountains and val- 
leys assumed form, and the other fluid molten stars in 
red hurricanes of flame rushed through the interstellar 
space, swift as the lightning's flash, and at God's com- 
mand took their places in regular orbits, to travel their 
allotted paths, under the " sweet influences of the 
Pleiades," until time shall be no more. Our earth, too, 
rushed through the vast chartless sea of space until 
it felt the " binding hand," and yielded to the " sweet 
Pleiadian influence " and rolled steadily into its allotted 
pathway. 

As time rolled by the internal heat escaped by raising 
and bursting the cooling crusts of the earth. Volcanoes 
lifted their towering heads above the undulating plains 
and vomited forth their molten lava ; the cracking earth, 
with blazing torches, would fill the ether voids with dark 
columns of smoke and poisonous vapor gases. All this 
had to pass away, and ages elapse, ere fish, plant, bird 
or beast could exist. That these features of nature 
were facts in those far-away ages is amply proven by 
the wrinkled brows of mother earth as we now behold 
her, in the deep canons and lofty mountains of this and 
other regions of the globe. And these medals left us by 
the hand of the great Creator give us much to con- 
template. 

The spawn of the first dawn of life, the testacea of 
the protozoan era of cellular form, of grapholite or 
trilobite, minutely revealed in the cooled strata of the 
Laurentian era, corresponding to the Mosaic declaration 
of the birth of fish and birds, and the waters were com- 
manded to " bring forth abundantly — each after his 
kind." This mandate issued by the Creator at the very 
dawn of life, " each after his kind," has held all things, 
having life in an even balance, and when controverted 
or disregarded, has destroyed plants, animals and 
nations. 

Turn now again to that cold, icy region where I posi- 



288 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

tively assert the earth first cooled, and plant, bird, 
beast and man primarily came upon the stage; let us 
reason together, and see if I am not right in making the 
declaration. 

The land of the North American continent extends 
to the north pole — no other land or continent does. The 
poles of the earth are farthest from the heat of the sun 
that keeps light and warmth upon and with us ; they are 
the coldest places, because they are farthest from the 
great solar heat, and would naturally be first to cool, 
as they are the most distant from the heat. Of course 
it is but common reason for us to believe that God 
planted the flora fauna upon the earth as soon as 
it was cool enough to receive it. The trees, plants, and 
vegetable matter, of course, were the first signs of life ; 
then fish, birds, and the beasts, then came man in the 
sixth era— man of a low order of intellect, but a shade 
above the monkey tribe, with the long dolichokephalic 
heads, prognathus jaws, and small brain capacity, dark 
skin and woolly-haired, capable of standing a very hot 
climate. They have heavy, tulip-shaped lips. After 
them, in that far northern region, in the eighth era of 
the Mosaic account, came the later intelligent man, fair- 
skinned, with mesokephalic head, orthognathus or up- 
right jaws, straight, slender bones with duties to per- 
form, and it was into this man created on the eighth day, 
after the finishing of his work on the seventh, God 
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and that 
man became a living soul. When nature was at its 
zenith of grandeur, God planted a garden there and 
placed the man of intelligence — the man of the mesoke- 
phalic brain pan, the man of the living soul — to dress 
it, and to keep it. 

How beautiful this region around the north pole must 
have been, when in all its pristine beauty it bloomed, 
fresh from the Creator, planted by the hands of God! 
There was no night there; eternal day reigned. Six 
solid months of sunshine, above the horizon; ninety-five 
days of twilight and dawn ; forty-two days of soft 
moonlight, so brilliant that you could read the finest 
print by its gleam, and each star of the first magnitude 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 289 

revealed your shadow. Then, as the sun sank to the 
horizon's rim, the glorious aurora borealis blazed forth, 
more and more brilliantly, as the sun sank deeper into 
the shadow of the earth, until his face became entirely 
shrouded. Then the aurora disk became far brighter, 
and with ten thousand sparkling, changing colors per 
minute, it spread its variegated dyes over the entire 
polar region, in volumes of light so bright and lovely 
that neither pen nor pencil can give you a faint concep- 
tion of its beauty and grandeur. 

I have seen Louie in her wonderful serpentine dance 
with kaleidoscope lime-lights revolving and flashing upon 
her, and I have seen the revolving electric lights, play- 
ing upon the fountains, and millions of drops of 
water, each illumed with a different hue, all moving and 
sparkling, a living mass of indescribable beauty, but 
they all sink into insignificance when compared to that 
grand majestic, celestial fountain of light that flashes 
eternal above, and around, and ever guards the primal 
abode of man. 

I have been impressed by and passed through many 
scenes of grandeur in my sixty years of wandering. I 
have felt the blasts of the tropical storms at sea ; have 
watched the vivid flashes of lightning as they lighted 
the dark, boiling, pathless ocean, and felt the shock 
and deafening roar of the accompanying thunder ; have 
heard the awful cry of fire a thousand miles from land ; 
have watched the crash and heard the thunder of a 
thousand bombshells as I was sheltered inside of the 
Malakoff^ at the siege of Sevastopol in the Crimean 
war, and again upon the heights of Vicksburg, and at 
Petersburg, and in many of the battles of the Confed- 
erate war, but never have I had such feelings of awe, 
and demonstrations of grandeur, as I felt in my budding 
manhood, standing upon the frozen pinnacle of a 
grounded iceberg, gazing at the waving curtains of 
light, as they seemed to open and shut the doors of great 
caverns of light, seemingly hundreds of miles long, 
flashing and playing down the distant corridors and 
aisles of the grand auroran temple in that far-off 
frozen land, where the thermometer registers 90 degrees 



290 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

below the zero mark. May I never view it again while 
life lasts. 

It seems to me the greatest folly to attempt to reach 
the north pole. It is tempting nature, and will be pun- 
ished by death, for man cannot now exist where the 
foot of the man of the hving soul first had his habitat, 
in that garden planted by creation's Master hand. 

In the light of modern science I do not see how sane 
men can even dream that it is possible to penetrate to 
the north pole and live to tell the story. The great 
maelstroms of electricity that flow up from the equator 
to the poles, meet here ; the positive and negative cur- 
rents in battle array produce the aurora borealis, and 
give us that grand display of light that is faintly illus- 
trated in Edison's arc lamp ; man cannot compete with 
this. No being of earthly mold could possibly live where 
these great currents of electricity come together. Once 
in their grasp man would be as powerless to extricate 
himself as he would be to scale with a pirogue, or dug- 
out, the perpendicular falls of the Yosemite, or 
Niagara. 

This aurora borealis is the flaming sword placed by the 
hand of God to guard the Eden Garden where first dwelt 
the sinless man of the living soul. This flaming sword 
was not there until after the cooling crust of the earth 
had reached the equator. The Garden of Eden was 
planted upon earth, and was in existence until, as I 
have said before, the cooling shell of the earth reached 
the equator, and the positive and negative electricity as- 
cending northward met over this garden and produced 
the aurora borealis. God warned Adam and Eve from 
this garden, and the language of the Bible is in these 
words : " So he drove out the man ; and he placed at 
the east of the Garden of Eden cherubims, and a flam- 
ing sword, which turned every way to keep the Tree 
of Life." 

Turning now to that long ago epoch, when the Gar- 
den of Eden was first planted, and Nature was smiling 
in the splendors and primal glories of creation's dawn, 
how beautiful, how grand must have been that region, 
fresh from the conception and hand of the Incarnate 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 291 

God. Mind cannot conceive, nor words pen, nor pencil 
picture it. The tropical landscapes, spreading out on 
every hand under the warm sun of eternal day ; the 
lovely, bright plumed song birds of every hue ; the earth 
carpeted with the fairest and most fragrant flowers ; 
fruits of every kind and flavor; trees robed in mantles 
of eternal verdure, waving their green foliage on the 
breath of heaven-born zephyrs, and filling the air with 
the sweetest perfumes, under a cloudless sky ; with bird, 
beast, and the man of the living soul dwelling amidst 
the glorious, heaven-born surroundings, in perfect 
peace and harmony. 

No chilling winds ; no cold, cloudy, rainy hours ; no 
storms of sleet or snow, no icy blasts sent their frozen 
breath against the forms of the man and his fair help- 
mate, to cause their forms to shrink and shiver from its 
boreal touch. Indeed this garden must have been, in 
reality, a paradise. Yes, a paradise, such as can never 
again exist on this insect-poisoned earth of ours. 

Conditions have so changed that nowhere on the face 
of the whole globe can the Eden Garden be again re- 
produced. Where bird, beast, and man have multiplied 
by thousands, the insects and creeping things have 
increased by billions, and trees and plants have con- 
stantly decreased. The insects are the enemies of the 
whole fauna and flora of the earth and sea. They swarm 
around the tallest mountain tops, and penetrate the 
darkest caverns of earth, and sound the bottom of the 
deepest seas, until no place is exempt from them. They 
render life a torment, and destroy one-half of all the 
fruits of the labor of man in every clime. 

Now let us resume, and recapitulate the cold, unan- 
swerable facts regarding my original declaration that 
it was at the north pole, on the shores of the North 
American continent, that God first planted the flora 
and fauna of earth. 

The geological strata of the formation of our conti- 
nent is beyond question or doubt the very oldest. The 
igneous rocks prove that the whole globe was once a 
molten mass, in liquid form ; it had to be a liquid before 
it could assume a globular or spherical shape from the 



^92 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

ether pressure, equal on every side. It had to begin 
cooling somewhere first, and we are all cognizant of the 
fact that all known substances will begin cooling at the 
point most distant from controlling heat. Hence the 
sun, being the great fire that gives heat and light to all 
on this globe, and rules and governs it; and as this 
great governing sun is with us as it was at creation's 
dawn, and the poles of the earth are the most remote 
or distant points of our globe from it ; hence they, the 
poles, would be the first to cool, beyond any contro- 
versy or doubt. 

Now man, bird and beast, and the trees, fruits, and 
flowers have their habitat on dry land; and as we have 
shown from a glance at the common geographies of the 
earth's surface, and proven by personal explorations 
that there is no land for thousands of miles to the south- 
ward of the most southern points of the continents of 
Africa and South America, and but a few small islands 
in a boundless sea that rolls along the northern confines 
of Europe and of Asia, cutting them off from the north 
pole; it remains to be seen, that only on the North 
American shore, which stretches out its vales and moun- 
tain chains into the regions of this spot of cooling 
earth, could the first living land animals and plants have 
come into existence. Yes, the North American conti- 
nent alone presents the physical conditions necessary, 
wherein the Great Creator could have planted the first 
flora and fauna of our old earth as we now know it. 
No other continent extends near enough to either pole 
to take from her this honor. That she was inhabited in 
that long by-gone age, when the earth was warm and 
genial where now eternal ice and snow ever gleams, is 
amply proven by the great storehouses of the bones of 
bird, beast and fauna, as well as the remains of all the 
flora of the tropics, now frozen into solid stone, to re- 
main as monuments and imperishable medals, molded by 
the hand of God himself, to prove " the wonders of His 
works," and to show us that this continent of North 
America should be called the " Old World," instead of 
the eastern hemisphere being given that honor. 

It was undoubtedly from this region of North 



: MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 293 

America that the migrations of men began, that peo- 
pled the whole western hemisphere and thence spread to 
Asia, Europe, and Africa. And it was on these shores 
that early civilization had its genesis, and that early 
civilization, which began on this North American shore, 
ended at the mouth of the Nile River, in Egypt, forty- 
two hundred years before the dawn of the Christian Era. 
Over the Garden of Eden to-day waves the grand aurora 
borealis, the flaming sword placed in the hands of the 
Cherubim to warn man away from his primal abode. 

No living creature will ever again stand upon the 
spot where God planted the tree of life, and gave Adam, 
his last, his fairest, and best of all his created things, 
a heaven born " Woman." 



WHERE DID CAIN GET HIS WIFE? 

The sixth era of creation — The first men and women — The 
superior being of the eighth era — Adam and Eve — Cain's 
wife a creature of the sixth era. 

This question has puzzled the so-called theologians 
and hide-bound ecclesiastical conclaves for many long 
centuries. Moses in his Genesis has attempted to em- 
body a succinct history of the creation of man, as he 
gained it from Chaldean and Bablyonian lore, and from 
the priests and magi of Egypt. Moses was the law- 
giver and leader of the descendants of Abraham, and 
was one of the greatest generals and lawmakers of any 
known age. Is there any reason why we should not pay 
attention to the Genesis of this great man ? 

Now in attempting to show who Cain took for a wife, 
I do not pretend to be wiser than the thousands of 
saintly priests or learned theologians, but shall bring 
reason and plain common sense to my aid, and lift the 
clouds and veils that have been thrown around the 
original declarations of Moses, and keep ever in view 
that mandate issued by the Great Creator, when fish, 
bird and animal first appeared on this earthly globe — 
that mandate issued alike to all — the atoms and mole- 
cules designed by God. He commanded herb, bird, fish 
and animal, and every creeping thing that contained 
life, to bring forth abundantly, each after his kind. 
Obedience to this law gives us the varieties of plants, 
fishes, birds, insects and animals that we are familiar 
with; each after his kind, in their glorious originality 
and perfection. 

The controversion of this law and miscegenation of 
plants, fishes, birds or animals give us hideous monstrosi- 
ties, abortions, and bastards — something not planned by 
the hand, nor designed in the wisdom of the Great Archi- 
tect of the universe. With this prelude let us go at once 
into the principle of our subject. 

294 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 295 

In the sixth era of the creation, God said : " Let us 
make man in our own image, after our likeness." So 
God created man in his own image, male and female 
created he them. And God blessed them, and commanded 
them to be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the 
earth. And he made them masters of everything that 
moveth or creepeth upon the earth. And he gave them 
of every herb, and tree, that had seed in itself, for meat. 
No tree or plant was forbidden these men and women of 
the sixth era of creation. There was no Garden of Eden 
tree for them. The Garden of Eden had not been 
planted. They had the fruit of every tree and plant 
that had seed in itself for meat. So how could they have 
been the man and woman of the garden.'' 

For his especial command, in regard to herb and tree 
for meat, is in this plain, emphatic and unmistakable 
language as recorded in the twenty-ninth verse of the 
very first chapter of Genesis. And God said, " Behold 
I have given you every herb, bearing seed, which is upon 
the face of the earth, and every tree, in which is the 
fruit of a tree yielding seed : to you it shall be for meat." 
And in the very next breath, we find these words : " And 
to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the 
air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, 
wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for 
meat, and it was so. And God saw that everything that 
he had made, and beheld it was very good." And the 
sixth era of creation was over. And in the seventh era 
God ended his first creative aeon and rested. It is thus 
expressed in the Bible language: 

" And the evening and morning were the sixth day : 
thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the 
hosts of them. 

" And on the seventh day God ended his work which 
he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all 
his work which he had made. 

" And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it ; 
because that in it, he had rested from all his work which 
God created and made." 

In the above verses, copied from the exact wording 



296 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

of the text of Genesis, I have closely followed it. And 
we find nothing in the sixth era, nor the ending of God's 
work in the seventh era, where he rested, to show us that 
the men and women of that early era were forbidden to 
eat of any tree or plant that had seed within itself, that 
grew upon the earth. Nor is there a mention made of 
a soul given to any being. These men and women in 
countless numbers made, created in the image and like- 
ness of the Creator, were as soulless as the fish, bird, 
beasts or creeping things. And these men and women 
were commanded to bring forth abundantly — to be 
fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. And they 
obeyed that chief mandate — " each after his kind." 
These men and women came into existence during the 
sixth era of creation. They multiplied and grew dur- 
ing the seventh, as did the trees, fish, birds and beasts 
and animals, while God rested during the seventh aeon 
of time. 

Now these men and women of the sixth era of crea- 
tion, made and fashioned in the image and after the like- 
ness of God, grew, multiplied abundantly, and replen- 
ished the earth, as God commanded, and they subdued 
and had dominion over the fish, the birds, and the beasts 
of the earth. They were intelligent enough to make 
bows, arrows, spears and traps, that gave them power 
to subdue the beasts, birds and animals of the forests 
and jungles of the earth, and knew the use of fire. I 
have hunted and lived with these same creatures in the 
jungle wilds of Africa, where they live in a state of 
nature. They have no idea of God; no mode of count- 
ing or computing numbers, except upon the fingers ; 
they have no written language or alphabetical signs ; no 
idea of the potter's art. They are filthy beyond concep- 
tion ; know nothing of sanitation ; have only savage, 
brutal, beastly instincts. They cannot be ruled by 
love — you have to rule and govern them by force. Grati- 
tude is an unknown quality in their make up. They are 
the most perfect mimics on the face of the earth. They 
make no provision for the morrow ; they live and 
breathe only in the now. They have not a single at- 
tribute of the white man, and only resemble him in size 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTUBES 297 

and a general outline of form. The dens of the lions, 
tiger, panther and cat tribes are models of cleanliness 
in comparison to the huts of the savages of the upper 
Nile. 

Now in regard to the first men and women, they had 
no labors to perform ; the trees and tropical plants 
yielded them a superabundance of all that was necessary 
to sustain life, as they could eat of every tree and herb 
that bore fruit and had seed in itself. They were not 
compelled to do any kind of labor, but lived a roaming, 
nomadic life, having only to stretch forth their hands 
and pluck the finest fruits for their sustenance. They 
needed neither clothing nor shelter, for the new earth 
was warm and genial ; no heavy rains, no chilling blasts 
of snow and ice swept the land. They knew not how to 
sow, they only reaped of the fullness of the earth which 
brought forth abundantly. There was no incentive to 
work or toil. Not until the dawn of the eighth era 
of the world, that corresponds to the quarternary period 
of geology, did these conditions ever change. 

Upon the dawn of the eighth era a new being was 
formed by Almighty God — a new man — a man of fairer 
mold — a man with a living soul — a man of intelligence 
— a man with a conscience — a man knowing right from 
wrong ; far above the man of the sixth era. 

This new man's arrival is thus announced in the Mo- 
saic account : 

" And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the 
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; 
and man became a living soul. 

" And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in 
Eden. 

" And the Lord God took the man and put him into 
the garden to dress and to keep it. 

" And the Lord God commanded the man, saying : Of 
every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat : But of 
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt 
not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof, 
thou shalt surely die. 

" And the Lord God said, It is not good that man 



298 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

should be alone ; I will make him an helpmeet for him. 
" And the Lord God brought every beast of the earth 
and every fowl of the air unto Adam to see what he 
would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every 
living creature, that was the name thereof. 

" And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowls 
of the air, and to every beast of the field ; but for Adam 
there was not found an helpmeet for him." 

For in all that host of men and women, bird, beast 
and animal of the sixth era of creation then existent, 
there was nothing after his kind ; nothing of his pure 
bone, flesh and blood; nothing that would bring forth 
after his kind. 

" And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon 
Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs and 
closed up the flesh instead thereof. 

" And the rib which the Lord God had taken from 
Adam, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. 

" And Adam said. This is now bone of my bones and 
flesh of my flesh." 

She was after his kind. And Adam called his wife's 
name Eve, because she was the mother of all living 
(i. e., mother of all those of the living soul). 

This man Adam of the living soul we can readily see 
was of a newer creation. A far diff'erent being from the 
man of the first creation. This hew man — this man en- 
dowed with the living soul — comes upon the stage after 
the Creator had rested throughout the seventh era of 
the world's geologic age. His female helpmeet was 
taken from his o^vn anatomy and was " bone of his 
bone and flesh of his flesh," and she was the mother of 
all the future beings of his kind, " after his kind." 
The men and women of the first creation were of a lower 
order, and while made in the same form, size and shape, 
" each after his kind," they were not like the Adam crea- 
tion of the later era. The first were created males and 
females in countless numbers, each after his kind, just 
as the birds, beasts and animals were, while the man of 
the living soul stepped forth pure, undefiled and alone 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 299 

— fresh from the incarnate hand of God, and his wife 
Eve was a part of him, fashioned and molded pure and 
perfect, the last and fairest of all God's handiwork. 
When Cain, the first bom of the two last beings formed 
on the earth, came into the world, the fair young mother 
exclaimed, " I have gotten a man from the Lord." Thus 
in the exuberance of her joy she named him a son of 
God, and from that far-away era to the birth of Jesus 
her descendants were called the sons of God. 

Now as we become absorbed with the new order of 
beings, and their fall and expulsion from the Garden of 
Eden and the story of Cain and Abel leads us far away, 
we forget the multiplying thousands of men and women 
of the sixth day creation. I say we forget these beings 
and keep our thoughts with Adam and Eve, Cain and 
Abel. 

Adam and Eve were expelled from the beautiful gar- 
den home and became pioneers in a strange, bleak land ; 
cold winds and rain descended upon them and God 
clothed them in warm furs of animals. Cain became a 
tiller of the soil and Abel a keeper of the flocks — one a 
farmer, the other a shepherd — the heads of the two 
great industries that clothe and feed the world. 

They offered voluntary sacrifices to God, their father. 
Cain brought the finest fruits of his fields, and Abel the 
first-born of his flocks. God had respect for Abel's of- 
fering, but not for Cain's, and this made Cain angry 
and he rose up and slew Abel. Now this all seems wrong, 
when viewed from our human standpoint. We think 
that God should have had as much respect for Cain's 
off^ering as for Abel's. Cain gave the choicest and best 
of all his field and garden products ; yes, gave of the 
first and best ; it was all that he had to off'er, and who 
knew this any better than God, his Father? 

In answering this question, I will merely say as a 
prelude to the real answer, that God requires of us a 
sacrifice of love with each off^ering. A something that 
touches the heart strings, the conscience, the living soul ; 
a sacrifice that we can feel in our innermost nature. You 
never saw a child in your hfe to whom was given a bird, 
a kitten, puppy or pony or any living animal, that the 



300 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

child's heart did not stretch out and love it and cling 
to it as its very own. This love increases and grows, 
and we have seen whole families distressed and grieved, 
and the child's tears flow and his little heart ache at the 
death of his pet. Here lies the gravamen of Abel's offer- 
ing that made it acceptable in the eyes of God. He 
gave of the firstlings of his flock that he loved best, and 
it was a far greater sacrifice for him to give them up 
forever than it was for Cain to give up a few cabbage 
heads and potatoes, or other field or garden products. 
There was no love to give with these cold, inanimate 
objects; it did not touch a single finer fiber of the soul 
to part with them. Hence no real, true sacrifice, in the 
full and inward meaning of the word, was offered. 

It is true it was all Cain had to give, and no doubt he 
gave it willingly ; but it did not require the tearing loose 
of the finer heart strings that touched the living soul 
and made each chord of love pulsate and vibrate like the 
strings of a harp. Cain was jealous of this and it made 
him angry with his brother. And he determined to have 
his herds and flocks as his own, to monopolize the whole 
of them, and combine them with his farming operations 
in modern syndicate style. So he slew Abel and took 
the herds and flocks and appropriated them to his own 
use. The death of Abel left only the three beings of 
the living soul upon the whole earth. These were Adam, 
Eve and Cain. But there were countless thousands of 
the sixth era men and women on the earth and they had 
no fixed habitat. They roamed the face of the earth 
and lived upon the herbs and fruits of every tree that 
bore fruit, and had seed in themselves. They did not 
have to till the soil or labor to produce cereals and 
fruits for their sustenance ; these all grew spontaneously 
for their use, as they do to this day in the tropics. 

When the blood of Abel cried out from the earth to 
God his Father, God heard the cry and took the fields 
and flocks from Cain and sent him a vagabond and wan- 
derer far out into the land of Nod to the eastward of 
Eden, among these prognathus-jawed and dolichoke- 
phalic-headed men and women of the sixth day creation. 
And fallen from his high estate he married one or more 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 301 

of these women, and of course as they were not " bone 
of his bone and flesh of his flesh," his progeny was 
not of his kind. They could not possibly be. Nor were 
his descendants like either parent, for God's laws were, 
by this union, controverted, and the children (as they do 
to-day) inherited all the mean qualities of both parents 
and none of the good. 

Cain tried to civilize his wife's kinsmen, and at the 
birth of a miscegenated son, Enoch, he brought all of 
the kith and kin of his wife together, and built a city, 
and called it Enoch. And many of this miscegenated 
race intermarried and begat a new race entirely ; and this 
race of half-breeds spread rapidly over the earth. This 
breed changed the shape of the heads and jaws, and the 
color of the two races, and gave a brachykephalic skull 
and jaw, such as we see to-day in the Chinese; and they, 
in remixing, gave the red or brown color. I mean by 
this that the men and women of the sixth era, mixing 
with the miscegenated race of Cain and his Nodite wife, 
gave us the brown or red man. Their pictures are seen 
on the walls of caverns on the Cumberland River in 
Tennessee; at Palenque in Mexico; on the walls of the 
cliffs-dwellers of the Zuni Plateau in New Mexico and 
Arizona; in Hondurian cities and along the Andean 
range of mountains as far south as Lake Titicaca ; 
among the ruined cities of most of the islands of the 
Pacific, and throughout China, Persia, Arabia and 
Egypt as well as on the pottery on the banks of the 
Ohio and Mississippi valleys. These all point with un- 
erring fingers to the miscegenation of the two races that 
were in existence when Cain took his Nodite wife. These 
pictures have been viewed and commented upon by every 
anthropologist and archeologist that has ever given a 
page of his history to the world. 

The picture is as universal as that of the flood in all 
countries and all climes, and among all peoples. I shall 
give you a word painting of it. You see a group of 
four men standing in a row. The front man is pure and 
white, a well-dressed son of God. Just behind him is the 
thick-lipped, woolly-haired negro, with the prognathus 
jaws and dolichokephalic head. Behind him is the 



302 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

blended white and black, making the yellow man. And 
behind the yellow man is the blended yellow and black, 
making the brown or red man. Thus we see in that far- 
off age, the Nodite woman and Cain made the miscege- 
nated yellow race. Now the yellow and white race again 
blending makes a man or woman of a fairer hue, while 
the yellow and yellow mixing retain their yellow, and so 
on through all the various so-called races of the earth. 

Now returning to Biblical lore. Seth took the place 
in Adam's family vacated by the death of Abel. Adam, 
after the birth of Seth, lived eight hundred years and 
begat sons and daughters, and when Seth was a hun- 
dred and five years old he begat a son called Enos. And 
Seth lived eight hundred and seven years after the birth 
of Enos and begat sons and daughters. And so on for 
ages, these sons and daughters and grandsons and 
daughters of Adam increased rapidly, and the miscege- 
nated race of Cain swung around into view. These sons 
and grandsons, named by Eve " The sons of God," saw 
this mongrel race of Cain were fair, and they took wives 
from among this race, and again controverted the laws 
of God and disregarded that mandate given to all crea- 
tures, that they should each and every one beget like 
and like, " each after his kind." And he repented him 
that He had made the man of the living soul ; so He 
determined to destroy every miscegenated creature, bird, 
beast and animal and man on the face of the globe. But 
in looking over the situation he found one pure and 
perfect family, namely, Noah and his sons and his own 
wife and the wives of his sons. These were pure and 
perfect types of the man of the living soul. And the 
Bible declares that Noah was " perfect in his genera- 
tion " ; no mixed or contaminated blood here. 

If these black people were not already in existence, 
right here we would have learned this fact from the lips 
of God. They were here in countless thousands ; soulless 
beings, just above the brute creation, in the form and 
pattern of the man of the living soul, but of a darker 
hue ; a simple anthropoid, who would pass away as the 
beasts of the earth. The production of the red, white, 
black and ringed streaked and striped cattle are ac- 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 303 

counted for in the Bible, and the cause given by God 
Himself. And is it not reasonable to suppose that if 
Shem, Ham and Japeth had been respectively the red, 
black and white sons of Noah, and father of the Indian, 
negro and white races, that God would so have declared? 
And if Mrs. Noah had been the mother of three sons, 
at one birth, one a thick-lipped, woolly-haired, dolichoke- 
phalic-skulled, prognathus-jawed negro, one a brachy- 
kephalic-skulled, long-haired, red Indian, and one a fair- 
haired mesokephalic-skulled white man, and neither after 
the father's likeness nor after her kind, the miracle 
would have been mentioned in the Holy Bible and com- 
mented upon and explained, as was the red, white, black, 
streaked and striped cattle. Surely what appertained 
to the highest of God's creation — the men of the im- 
mortal soul — were of more importance to the human 
race than were the mere brute creation. 

With the first great law of " like shall beget like, 
each after his kind," staring him in the face, would not 
old Noah, a man perfect in his generation, have been 
surprised and wondered how he could have been the 
father of three sons of such distinct and different 
anatomical forms and features.'' And would not his 
wife, and the attendant women of that age, have been 
equally puzzled to know how she could have given birth 
to these three totally different beings.? There would 
have been mention made of it, just as of the cattle and 
confusion of tongues. If we give credence to the Bible, 
there was no way for Noah and his wife- — pure and per- 
fect in their generation — to have been the progenitors 
of the white, black and tan races of men. Theology 
must look to another source, for Shem, Ham and Ja- 
peth were pure white men of the living soul, and inheri- 
tors of all that that means, and being such, only through 
corrupting God's laws and miscegenation with the be- 
ings of the sixth era of creation could they have been 
begotten of the brachykephalic yellow and red races 
of the earth, and only by this corrupting mode did the 
yellow and mixed races come upon it. 

Now prior to the flood of Genesis, man was strictly 
a vegetarian ; only the unclean beasts preyed upon flesh. 



304 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

After the flood, man became a flesh eater and an un- 
clean animal. For a confirmation of this view see Gen- 
esis, 1-29, and Genesis 9-13 ; as I assert nothing in this 
work that is not susceptible of absolute proof, by 
sacred and profane history and by the medals of nature, 
as revealed by the fossilized remains of the flora and 
fauna. 

So God gave the earth once more a chance to carry 
out his original designs. He commanded Noah to take 
into his ark for preservation of all the clean beasts, 
birds and animals, fourteen of a kind, seven males and 
seven females, and of the unclean, only two of a kind, 
one male and one female, so as to keep seed upon the 
earth, and Noah did so. And after a stay of one year 
and one month in the ark, Noah opened the doors there- 
of, built an altar and sacrificed a part of the birds, 
beasts, and animals that were in it with him as a burnt 
sacrifice to Almighty God. This sacrifice would have 
destroyed whole tribes and species of animals, birds and 
beasts, if he had only had one pair of each with 
him in the ark. And the very means he employed to 
preserve them would have been destroyed and annulled. 
And it was after the flood that God gave to the sons of 
Noah dominion over the whole earth and over every- 
thing that dwelleth thereon. 

Now the miscegenation of the men and women of the 
sixth era of creation with the men of the living soul of 
the eighth era of creation brought about the destruc- 
tion of the world, as is shown by the Bible. God 
created the men and women of the sixth era without 
souls ; and the men of the eighth era could not give or 
create what God did not, nor could they by any manner 
of means give a living soul to their descendants of mis- 
cegenated breed, for " like " here did not " beget like, 
each after his kind." God created the black and white 
race, but not the yellow, red, brown and tan. And all 
the mean and vile traits that lie dormant in the man of 
the living soul, and in the sixth era men and women, 
crop out and predominate in the miscegenated races ; 
none of the good of the two races abide in the misce- 
genated descendants. Yes, every mean quality of both 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 305 

parents is concentrated and magnified in this misce- 
genated offspring, and is forever cursed. Now the mis- 
cegenated races continue on the same plane ; " like be- 
gets like, each after his kind," with them as with any 
animal, bird or beast, and any of the yellow, red or 
black or white tribes will again miscegenate indefinitely ; 
thus peculiar tribes or races of men are formed. 

It is the same with animals as with men ; the law of 
" like begets hke " once corrupted goes on unchanged 
to the end of time. The hairless, naked, worthless pug- 
nosed pup of Chihuahua, Mexico, will miscegenate with 
the massive St. Bernard, the Newfoundland or the in- 
telhgent collie, and breed on and on until the land is full 
of a mongrel breed of worthless curs, with not one at- 
tribute of the parent stock apparent. So with man. 
This law once corrupted sinks the whole nation. Sacred 
history is pregnant with warning of this corruption. 
And the progeny of the negro and white man were 
called bastards, because they were not begotten, " each 
after his kind " ; these children thus miscegenated were 
not allowed in the temples, nor to touch any of the holy 
things belonging to them, even for ten generations. (See 
Deut. 22:12.) 

We need not go to sacred history for a confirmation 
of the assertions here promulgated. The world is full 
of the facts. The curse of nature and of nature's God 
follows the corruption of this great fundamental law, 
given at creation's dawn, when the great Architect said, 
in unmistakable tones, " Let the whole earth bring forth 
abundantly." The plants, the fish, the insects, the 
birds, the animals, the cattle, the beasts, and man and 
everything that creepeth on the face of the earth, " each 
after his kind." 

According to the Bible, Cain, the oldest son of Adam, 
the first son of God, the first-bom being that came in 
the likeness of the man of the living soul; the first in- 
heritor of that precious soul that gives us eternal life; 
this man, this Cain, this first son of the living God, 
disobeyed this mandate of his father, and chose a wife 
not of his kind. He took a Nodite woman of the soul- 
less beings, the woman of the first or sixth era of crea- 



306 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

tion, and this first corruption of that law brought about 
the Noahian deluge, with which God cleansed the earth 
of this abortive crew. 

There is no way to dodge this solemn truth, and pro- 
fane history confirms these facts of the Bible, despite 
the clouds and darkening mists of corrupt priests and 
ecclesiastical conclaves thrown around them in the dark 
days of ignorance and superstition, when the mighty, 
sacred stream of religion was in its early childhood. 
The powerful searchlight of modem science, backed by 
the permeating Roentgen rays of unbiased reason, but 
the more fully confirm these sacred truths. They will 
forever shine like glittering stars above the darkening 
cesspools of ignorance, superstition, infamy and earthly 
corruption, until the purifying fires of destruction shall 
again turn this earth, at the last day, into a molten 
mass again, " without form and void," to whirl through 
space until purified by fire and again be regenerated 
and born anew. 



THE MOUND-BUILDERS 

Civilization first attained along the range of the Andean 
Mountains — From here spread to the shores of Asia and 
Africa — Negroes the Mound-Builders under taskmasters 
— The potter's art — Life of the Mound-Builders. 

Who were the Mound-builders? They were negroes, 
under the supervision of white men, or white masters, to 
direct and govern them. 

In my earlier explorations among the ruins of the 
ancient people of the earth I had conceived a false 
idea of where the oldest ruined cities were to be found, 
and I wasted several years of valuable time, and much 
money in making journeys and examining closely, in 
person, the tumulii of Baalbeck, Palmyra, Babylon, 
Nineveh, and those of Egypt. 

I read various histories of these ruins, my curiosity 
was aroused to the fullest extent, and I determined to 
see them with my own eyes and judge for myself. I 
was unable to find a work, by any explorer, that gave 
me any information about that part of the continent 
of Africa that lies south of the states or kingdoms that 
border the Mediterranean Sea, so I determined to ap- 
proach Egypt from the west, and go far down south, 
beyond the confines of Morocco, and turn east across 
the Great Desert of Sahara, and strike the Nile River, 
far up, in the Nubian desert. 

I landed at Sallee, a port on the western shore of 
Africa, about 125 miles south of Tangiers, and on camel 
back I took the road in an easterly direction to the city 
of Fez, the capital of Morocco. 

The city lies on the banks of the Wadi Sebu, in lati- 
tude 34° north and about the fifth meridian west of 
Greenwich; it is an old, dilapidated place, seemingly 
several thousand years old, from the tumulii and ruins 
that are apparent on every hand. Here I fitted out 
my desert " kit" and became a part and parcel of a 

307 



308 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

great desert caravan of about 5,000 people of all kinds 
and nationalities, and for five months we left the known 
world behind us and buried ourselves in the Great Desert 
of Sahara. 

For 300 miles our path was over mountains and 
through valleys of wild grandeur, and at times we were 
11,000 feet above the level of the sea, and our camels 
suffered from the sharp rocks cutting their feet. The 
whole region to the oasis of Tafilet is one of gloomy 
grandeur. The first oasis at which we stopped for a 
rest of a week was Ferkla ; here there were some rich 
lands and fertile spots, but as a whole the region is 
barren and God-forsaken. The whole region, as far 
as the eye can reach, seems to rest under a curse, and 
only where the influence of the wadis, or rivers, is 
felt, is there any signs of vegetable hfe; where there 
is moisture it is wonderful how productive the land is. 

But I did not set out to give you a description of 
the country or to recite my adventures while crossing 
the great sea of sand that rolls from the Atlantic Ocean 
to the valley of the Nile in far-off Egypt, as it would 
take too much time and space. 

We entered the valley of the Nile near the north 
end of the Nubian desert. Part of the great caravan, 
of which I was a member, turned south to Khartoum, 
and we north, down the Nile. 

I gazed at the massive temples and statuary of Kar- 
nak and explored miles of the painted and decorated 
mummy vaults and tombs of the ancient residents of 
early Egypt. While contemplating these great masses 
of colossal statues and sculptured, pillared temples, 
the w^ork of a people more than six thousand years 
ago, I saw that they had been civilized many an aeon 
or centuries of time before they could have constructed 
such works as I saw here. Yes, they could not have 
builded such works as these without the experience of 
many centuries of teaching, and under the instructions 
of those who had combined wisdom and knowledge, 
gathered from a long line of highly cultured and gifted 
ancestors. 

I found that I was on the wrong track of archaic 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 309 

ruins ; I would have to hunt another and an older region 
to find the beginning. Here I was really at the mouth 
of the first great stream of early civilization, a civiliza- 
tion that really came to an end rather than began more 
than six thousand years ago. There was no childhood 
of art or religion here; everything was perfected, yes, 
hoary and gray with age, when these builders laid the 
foundation stones of the pyramids. 

From whence came the ancestors of these builders, for 
they had to have them.'' And their ancestors had to 
have teachers ; they did not spring into existence fully 
taught, armed and equipped for such work as I saw 
here on every hand. I found that in Egypt, Arabia, 
Persia, or any part of the so-called " Old World " I 
could not find the first ruins, nor the beginning of an 
early civilization ; everything here indicated that I was 
at the mouth of the stream ; yes, a stream that was 
drying up and evaporating centuries before the birth 
of our Saviour, or the dawn of the Christian era, at 
least 6,000 years ago. I was well aware that it would 
take the ancestors of this six-thousand-years-old civil- 
ized people several thousand years to reach the point 
of civilization that I beheld here amid the ruins of 
Palmyra, Baalbeck and Egypt. 

They had an ancestry, they had a beginning, and 
they had teachers. They did not spring into existence 
by magic in a single year, nor a single century. It 
took aeons of time for them to attain their civilization 
and to teach their children. Where did they begin and 
whence came they.^* I determined to trace them to their 
source; and I firmly believed it could be done. I was 
alone in my endeavor, and the results I will give you, 
and let you be the judge. 

I sat for hours on the great pyramid, the great work 
of a people, who, six thousand years ago, were in their 
glorious zenith of civilization — a civilization that the 
new nations of more modern Europe and America will 
never reach for another thousand years. As I sat on 
a stone on the flat top of the great pyramid in the 
soft, clear atmosphere, so transparent that the eight 
other mounds in this group, and the lion man-headed 



SIO MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

sphynx, a thousand years older than the pyramids, 
seemed ahnost in reach. I looked down from my four 
hundred and eighty feet of elevation above the desert 
sand upon the dim, unreal past and I felt an inspiration 
not of this earth. I could see Abraham and his descend- 
ants passing by, for they, too, looked up to my perch 
in that long ago time. I could see the children of 
Israel, as they toiled under their Egyptian taskmasters, 
making brick for the residences of the rich citizens of 
the worshipers of Osiris. I could see the vast armies 
of Darius, of Cyrus, of Alexander, of Caesar and of 
Napoleon, passing by. I could see the laden vessels 
of these bygone people bearing the rich stores of their 
granaries to the distant continents and islands of the 
world; to the city of Rome, alone, they bore annually 
twenty million bushels of grain. Now all are gone and 
only the still, voiceless desert, with its recent horrors 
over which I had but a day before passed, stretching 
out until lost in the dim maze of the horizon. 

It is worth all the toil and dangers of sea and desert 
to live but a few short hours upon the apex of the 
great pyramid and let its inspirations drift you back 
through the countless ages of history that are famihar 
themes to this vast pile of inanimate stone. It is no 
easy matter to realize that here on this great mass of 
rigid stone you are standing upon a work of man, 
made and built forty-two hundred years before the dawn 
of the Christian era. You seem to be, as it were, 
snatched up to some vast height that overlooks the 
plains of time, and see the centuries mapped out be- 
neath your feet. The mind, in contemplating these 
vast, mysterious, liidden vaults of time, seems to sink 
into the shadowy vales of the infinite, and there is no 
place of rest in the seething maelstrom of thought, that, 
like the simoon's blast, hurtles with its dust and desert- 
parched sands around you. No place of rest save in 
the gloomy vaults of oblivion beyond the lethean river 
that flows along the shores of eternity ! 

But laying aside these vast speculative themes, awak- 
ened by the contemplation of the grand, gloomy and 
beautiful ruins of ancient Egypt, let us turn to the 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 311 

questions now uppermost — Who were the ancestors of 
these builders of the mounds and pyramids of Egypt? 
And from whence did they come? They had a begin- 
ning and they had a long line of gifted ancestry, ages 
before they could attain to the height of civilization 
that we see displayed in the ruins around us. There 
can be no doubt about this fact. It did not take me 
long to come to this conclusion. I saw that I 
was at the mouth of the great old river, the very end 
of the great stream of civilization, a stream that evap- 
orated into a sea of ruins more than fifty odd centuries 
ago. Where was the source of this great, grand old 
stream? Where its head? Where the springs that once 
furnished its living waters? These were the burning 
questions that fired my youthful heart ; that let inspira- 
tion into my soul and bent my will to undertake the 
solving of the almost unsolvable task. I fully realized 
the difficulties I would encounter in the effort, but with 
ardor and determination I bent my will to accomplish 
the undertaking and I am fully satisfied now. Just 
past the seventy-sixth milestone of life, I can rest and 
say that I have drank deeply from that hidden spring 
from whence flowed the ever-broadening river that laved 
the very foundation stones of ancient Egyptian civiliza- 
tion. 

To take you, gentle reader, over twenty-seven years 
of wanderings horse-back, mule-back, camel-back or 
afoot over and across every continent and great isle of 
the globe, and by pirogue, dug-out, skiff, yawl, sail or 
steam vessel across the pathless seas, and still and foam- 
ing rivers, would tax your powers of endurance beyond 
the limit. For it takes inspiration, a will, a firm resolve 
to weather the storms and dare the dangers that ever 
beset your way. 

On the southern shores of that great pleistocene sea 
that stretched from the Rocky Mountain chain on the 
west to the Appalachian chain on the east ; that covered 
the great plains that lie between, and of w^hich the 
great lakes of the northern boundary of the United 
States are left as debris, I found along this southern 
shore and upon the islands that dotted this great inland 



312 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

ocean the first relics of the ancestors of the civiHzed 
people of ancient Egypt. Here and down the valley of 
the great river that flowed southward and drained the 
surplus waters of the great ocean into the Gulf of 
Mexico, as the St. Lawrence now drains the Great Lakes, 
I found the first signs of a civilized people. Each tribu- 
tary of this great river, flowing from the Rocky Moun- 
tains east and southward, and forming the Appalachian 
chain, west and southward, contains numerous tumulii 
of the beginning of early civilized man. As I explored 
these regions east and west of this great oleographic 
plain and proceeded farther and farther southward, 
their marks of true civilization gradually increased and 
greater improvements would appear, slowly, but with 
an ever upward and onward tendency to improvement, 
as marked and as distinct as the growth of plant, flower, 
animal or child. I had found the head of the stream, 
and floating down the current with wind and wave in 
my favor was easy, and I enjoyed it. Each new dis- 
covery, each new ruined city proved I was right in 
my surmises. 

I wandered among the mounds of the Miami valley in 
Ohio ; along the caverns and tumulii of the Cumberland ; 
into the wild jungles of Yazoo valley, which in the 
vernacular of the Lidians is called Yazoo Okiniha, or, 
translated, the river of ruins, and not the river 
of death as some translate it ; over the wonderful buried 
cities of Arkansas ; far out into the mesas of Arizona 
and New Mexico ; down into the ruined cities of Mexico, 
Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, 
Equador, Peru, Chili and the whole slope of the Adean 
chain of mountains to the great Lake Titicaca, the 
highest and most beautiful lake in the world. 

I followed the great macadam and asphalt road, sixty 
feet wide, for fifteen hundred miles, with its continuous 
walls and beautiful ruined cities. I penetrated into the 
great tunnels, dug through solid mountains, fifteen miles 
long and thirty feet wide, paved with hexagonal stones, 
nine inches on each side and thirty inches long, fitted as 
smooth and close as sheets of tissue paper, along which 
flowed the pure waters of the mountains through these 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 313 

artificial aqueducts, for four hundred and fifty miles, 
into their cities. I saw trees whose concentric rings 
proved them to be from fifteen hundred to two thousand 
years old, tearing up the mosaic work of the city pave- 
ments and standing upon and piercing the walls of these 
deserted cities. These trees were turned into agate and 
quartz of variegated hues. I saw the sculptured busts 
of bird, beast and man ruined and overturned by these 
now petrified forests. 

The question naturally arises in the mind of the ex- 
plorer and scientists. When and at what age were these 
cities the abode of civilized man.'' When were they 
built, by whom built, when deserted, and for what cause.? 
Let us answer these, seriatim. 

Ages must have elapsed since these cities were de- 
serted before the seeds and sprouts of these monster 
trees could have taken root in the cracks and fissures 
of the solid walls and pavements of these cities ; the dust 
of ages accumulated and the stones disintegrated by the 
slow action of the winds and rains and the plural pro- 
cesses of the combined forces of the elements of nature 
so that their tiny roots could find sustenance sufficient 
to feed the gigantic bodies and wide spreading limbs 
of these monsters of the forests, now ten and fifteen feet 
in diameter and towering two to three hundred feet 
above the tessellated pavement and sculptured gates and 
doorways of the now ruined cities of the ancestors of 
the ancient builders. And ages have elapsed since death 
and decay seized their massive trunks and hurled them 
into their silent graves, crushing the pavements, sculp- 
tured walls, carved temples and palatial homes in their 
fall. And how long did they lie on the top of mother 
earth before each minute particle of their vast trunks 
and limbs was disintegrated and frozen into a mass of 
solid crystallized agate and flinty quartz.'' The mind 
of man is staggered in contemplation and gasps as the 
centuries roll before him. 

No living explorer with a single spark of poetry or 
sentiment in his nature and one gleam of unclouded rea- 
son in the finer fiber of his brain can wander as I did 
for four long years among the ruins of the prehistoric 



314 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

people, and not feel and realize that these builders were 
as far in advance of the civilization of the people of this 
generation as the ancient builders of the ruins of Egypt 
are ahead of the nomadic tribes that now fasten their 
desert-bred horses to the shafts of their spears stuck 
in the sands that whirl around the great sphynx under 
the shadow of the pyramids. He cannot gaze at the 
intricate tracery on the moulded pottery, the finely 
chased and graven vases of gold and silver, the deli- 
cately chiseled statuary over the gateway and on the 
walls of Cuzco, Titicaca, Granchimu, Teahuanaco, Tu- 
loom, Chichen, Itza, Uxmal, Mayapan, Mitla, Copan, 
Palenque, Labna and a thousand other minor cities 
throughout Mexico, Central and South America, with- 
out feeling that he is standing amid the niins of a people 
who had attained unto a higher plane of civilization 
than we, the boasted denizens of the twentieth century 
of the Christian era. He must feel that here, amid these 
beautiful ruins, were born and taught the ancestors 
of those people who laid the foundation stones of the 
sphynx, and reared the mighty pyramids and temples 
of Egypt. For this land was hoary and gray with age 
before the valley of the Nile lifted its form from out 
the depths of the Pleistocene Sea ; while the Andes, with 
their hoary heads lifted high toward the azure zenith, 
blazed in the glorious light of the Southern Cross, and 
that shining symbol lent its grandeur to the scene re- 
vealed to the eyes of these first people of a civilized 
world ages before the land of Egypt came up out of the 
sea bed or the walls of the Dead Sea were raised. The 
very winds teach us these facts. They are the hand- 
maidens of geology. They are ancient and faithful 
chronicles and when rightly consulted will reveal to 
us truths that nature has written upon their wings in 
characters as legible and more enduring than she has 
graven geological events on tablets of stone. 

The hoary-headed Andean Mountains lifted the seas 
that rolled over the African continent, sank the Dead 
Sea, parched the Saharan desert, and lifted the land 
of Egypt from its ocean bed by the agency of their 
winds. To-day you can see the dust of the Sahara upon 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 315 

the plants and rocks of this great mountain barrier ; 
this huge elevation dividing the southern half of the 
entire globe. And this huge backbone of the earth 
had to come into existence before the winds, the hand- 
maidens of geology, could lift the African continent to 
a habitable land for bird, beast or man. I repeat, that 
it is along this range of mountains, with its lovely 
plains and valleys, that civilization first attained its 
zenith, tens of thousands of years ago. And from here 
it spread across the isles and waters of the Pacific west- 
ward to the shores of Asia and Africa. 

This civilization peopled India, China, Persia and 
Arabia and ended in Egypt six thousand years ago. 
The pathway is strewn throughout the entire line of 
march with their ruins, ever increasing in beauty and 
grandeur and massiveness, as time and experience 
taught them. It is as easy a matter to follow them, 
when you get into the current of the stream, with wind 
and wave in your favor, as it is for a locomotive with 
its grooved wheels to roll along the two steel rails. 

As we have followed the prehistoric people from 
the shores of the great inland ocean that lashed the 
feet of the Rocky and Appalachian Mountains, south- 
ward into the lower part of South America, and thence 
to Asia, and left them at the mouth of the Nile in 
Africa ; in theory let us turn back and see what proofs 
we can introduce to confirm our theory. 

This great inland ocean that we have described as 
covering the plains and valleys between the Rockies and 
the eastern mountain ranges of the continent of North 
America, had its grand southern outlet through a gap 
at Tower Rocks, above Cairo, and lakes Superior, Mich- 
igan, Ontario, Erie, etc., are now the debris of this 
ancient ocean. It was drained by a great river, a grand 
INIississippi, of which the present Mississippi is but a 
pigmy of its giant ancestor; only in the time of the 
fullness of rainfall does it pretend even to swell to a 
shrunken representation of its forefather. When the 
great dam that held the waters of this inland ocean 
in abeyance was eroded or worn away or suddenly burst 
by an earthquake or other cause, by the centrifugal 



316 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

force of nature, a great cataclysm rushed down the val- 
ley and poured its waters into the Mexico sea, where 
Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana, now stands. 
The present serrated hills were then a level plain in the 
valley of this great river, and it was inhabited by an 
industrious agricultural people, steadily advancing by 
slow steps into civilization. 

Now to my mind, the writer of the book of Isaiah 
was familiar with this great catastrophe, learned from 
the records kept by the immigrants from these shores to 
Egypt, centuries after it occurred. The reference I 
refer to can be found in the eighteenth chapter of Isaiah, 
beginning, " Woe to the land shadowing with wings," 
etc., etc. Now the North and South American conti- 
nents are the exact shape of bird wings, the tip of one 
wing touching the shoulder of the other, and Isaiah, 
as he spoke, had to look directly westward beyond Eth- 
iopia or Africa, to bring America into his vision. At 
that time the lands had been spoiled by the rivers, and 
millions of the people drowned and the fowls of the air 
and the beasts of the earth had summered and wintered 
upon their decaying carcasses, and to this day, from 
Memphis to Baton Rouge, on ten thousand hills, you 
can find hundreds of acres of their human bones lying 
in heaps six feet thick, or scattered over vast areas. 
This, I say, may be a reference in written history of 
those long ago days. It is certainly enough to make 
our scientists and men of brains pause and take a pass- 
ing ghmpse at the medals of nature left for our obser- 
vation by the Creator of all. 

Now, I gave you the above merely to show how we 
may get support from others to corroborate our own 
views, and this method is too often followed by writers 
and scientists who draw their observations from others, 
and crowd their works with footlines and make their 
pages bristle with quotations. I make the assertion 
here that the mounds of North America were built by 
the thick-lipped, woolly-haired, prognathus- jawed ne- 
groes, with dolichokephalic skulls, and they did not 
build these mounds voluntarily, but under taskmasters. 
They were forced to do the work, just as the slaves 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 317 

of the Egyptians were, by the superior race of the 
raesokephalic and orthognathus-jawed. The bones 
found in the acres of them I have examined are as 
different in color, size and shape as the bones of the 
grey or cat squirrel and the red or fox squirrel. 

The pictures upon the pottery and tombs from West 
Virginia to Lake Titicaca, India, Persia, Arabia and 
Egypt; yes, from the caves of West Virginia to the 
sepulchral vaults of Egypt, always show a crowd of 
these negroes under the supervision of one white man, 
who is generally sitting down with a wand or rod in 
his hand, directing the negroes in their work. 

The polished stone implements known to archaeologists 
as neolithics (in contradistinction to the paleolithic or 
cracked or splintered arrow and spear head weapons of 
warfare) are the oldest. They were made by these 
industrious agriculturists and used for domestic pur- 
poses, long ages before the rough splintered arrow heads 
and javelin points and rough battle axes came into use. 
These ancient Mound-builders polished their stone mor- 
ters to grind their corn and wheat, and to curry the 
hair from their skins for clothing and to mix their 
colors. They mixed their clay first and shaped their 
pottery inside of woven baskets of willow and cane and 
burned them over open fires. This was the archaic be- 
ginning of the potter's art, and is the very first sign 
of a real civilization. These ancient burnt pastes of 
clay inside of wicker or basket work are something I 
have found nowhere else on earth except in the valley of 
the Mississippi and its tributaries, and I have been a 
close hunter after them all over the world. 

Now by observation and constant search we follow 
the evolution of the potter's art in the tracks of the 
early Mound-builders. As I have said before, the knead- 
ing of the mud into the wicker work and hardening it 
in the sun and over the fire is the very first step. Then 
comes the second stage, in which they plastered mud 
over the gourds, apples and pears and fruits of various 
kinds, roasted the clay in the fire, and removed the mould 
from the inside. Then they made various kinds of 
moulds of wood, bark and straw and burned them in 



318 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

the ashes, or roasted them I may say. The third era 
shows the irregular hand-fashioned pottery of grotesque 
form, with walls of irregular thicknesses, and made 
of several kinds of clay, all burned in open fires. Then 
come the figures of gourds, pears and various fruits 
and vegetables of a mixed kind, baked in an oven. Last 
comes the smooth, beautiful pottery, turned upon a 
wheel, and moulded and smoothed by a machine. These 
all have a trade mark, the oldest an ordinary cross, with 
each arm of the cross bent in at right angles to the 
center; another trade mark was a design now known 
as a Greek scroll. In these wares are found the shells 
of a bivalve, now geologically extinct, ground up and 
mixed in clay before baking. Finally comes the colored 
and glazed pottery. 

Now, in the lapse of years, we find that not until this 
later stage of the potter's art did they attempt to make 
human figures, and to place animals, birds and flowers 
upon the burnt clay in different colors. Soon after this 
era, migration from America began to move westward 
toward the shores of Asia into Africa. But I did not set 
out to write a dissertation on pottery, porcelain or cera- 
mic art. You can get a better one from your encyclo- 
pedia. 

The Mound-builders were not a warlike or nomadic 
people; they were purely agriculturists. They hunted 
and found the most productive spots on the face of the 
globe. They knew the rich lands from the poor, and 
on these rich new lands they planted their colonies and 
cultivated them much as we do to-day. The rich delta 
of the Yazoo in the valley of the great Mississippi was 
one vast garden spot ; not a foot of it was waste land. 
They used the waters of the New Mississippi, after it 
shrank to its normal proportions, to irrigate and keep 
fertile the already rich alluvium they found here in their 
migrations south. They furrowed every foot of it ; dug 
over ten thousand miles of drainage, irrigation, and 
navigable canals, from east to west and from north to 
south, crossing and intercrossing each other in thou- 
sands of places. So perfect was this canal system 
throughout the delta that, though thousands and thou- 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 319 

sands of years have elapsed since they were dug, you 
can to-day enter any one of them and by following 
its channel go to any part or plantation within its con- 
fines. 

So densely was this delta populated that there is not 
a square of one hundred acres in extent that does not 
contain a pottery kiln where they manufactured their 
ware, or a residence mound. There is not a natural 
stream in the delta west of the hill drain of the Yazoo 
proper and the Mississippi River ; all are artificial, and 
the work of negroes, under the supervision of their white 
taskmasters. The bones of these negroes, where they 
still exist, are found in countless thousands in burial 
grounds along the high banks of the ancient shores of 
the Mississippi River. In front of my own residence on 
the eastern shore of a natural depression extending for 
miles north and south of me, is one of the ancient cities 
of the dead. In walking a few hundred yards along 
this front after a rain you can gather a pocketful of 
their teeth and find whole jaw bones and skulls of this 
protruding- jawed nation. Here and there, separate in 
a pottery coffin, is found the frame of a white man, but 
never near the bones of the dolichokephalic breed. 

On the west side of the Mississippi upon the old 
bank of that stream, above the highest waters and op- 
posite the widest part of the Yazoo-Mississippi delta, 
once existed the largest city in the universe. It covered 
Drew, Desha, Ashley and parts of other counties, and 
fully twenty millions of these busy Mound-builders once 
had their homes here. The Mississippi River and the 
Gulf of Mexico furnished them fish, the Yazoo delta was 
their garden, and the valley lands of the river and the 
rich prairies of Arkansas and Texas gave them their 
bread. Their mounds to-day yield many relics of those 
long-ago vanished people. Their colonies spread to the 
Zuni plateau to the west and down into Mexico in the 
south, and on and down through Central and South 
America, as you can see by following the ever-increasing 
and ever-progressive traces in that direction. Try trt 
trace them in any other way and you are going up 
stream against wind and current. Follow them as I 



320 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

have, and each day's journey will show you that I have 
solved the problem of the early Mound-builders. Each 
day's journey toward Lake Titicaca in South America 
shows you plainly the evolution of civilization. It had 
its birth on the southern shore of that great North 
American island ocean ages ago, and it ended at the 
mouth of the Nile four thousand years before the Chris- 
tian era. 

The testimony of the rocks, the testimony of the 
fossilized remains of the earth, the archfeology of pot- 
tery, all point to North America as the earliest habitat 
of man. The prehistoric ruins of over two thousand 
cities give us the earliest history of civilization's genesis 
on this same continent, and some bold Columbus of 
Peru or Chili first discovered Asia and Africa in an 
American-built ship. 

Why need we speculate on the ability of these build- 
ers of the magnificent temples and cities of America, 
whose zodiacal stones and telescopic tubes turned to 
the heavens show us that they were far in advance of 
us in the knowledge of movements of earthly and heav- 
enly bodies. We can see the great aqueducts of these 
people passing through tunnels fifteen miles long and 
thirty feet wide, paved with stones of hexagonal 
shape, thirty inches deep and polished and fitted so 
close that no water has leaked through them for 
a hundred centuries. Who can see the great walls built 
up from the depths of chasms a thousand feet deep 
and more than twenty-six hundred feet wide ; who can 
see the great pyramids built of earth and stone, three 
hundred feet high and covering more than one hundred 
and sixty acres, with grand and beautiful temples upon 
their tops, and their interiors filled with thousands of 
vaults of their mummified dead ; I say, who can see these 
wonders and doubt but that these people of that far-off 
civilization had sense enough to construct vessels, the 
equal of any that Columbus or Cortez possessed, or that 
we used less than a century ago? 

They built structures impervious to fire, with walls 
so massive and thick that they could not be heated 
to the melting point, hence were indestructible by heat 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 321 

and as impervious to the corroding tooth of time as 
the mountain chains. Were we to now leave our cities 
and dwellings in all their pomp and splendor, ere the 
lapse of a thousand years not a vestige of their splendor 
would be left visible to the eye of some future archaeolo- 
gist. 

In the 19th chapter of Job, 23rd and 24th verses, 
we see that at the time he wrote, and his is the oldest 
book of the Bible, he was thoroughly acquainted with 
the printing of books and the art of moulding type in 
lead, then in rock moulds after their forms had been 
graven on the stones, just as we do now. Hear what he 
says : " Oh, that my words were now written ; oh, that 
they were printed in a book. That they were graven 
with an iron pen and lead in a rock frame." 

I believe that for ages this race navigated the seas 
as we do to-day, and that they and their negro slaves 
populated all the great islands of the Pacific ocean ; 
that the great stream of immigration flowed westward 
from the shores of America, and kept up constant 
communication with Europe just as we do to-day. 

The grandest graveyard and the greatest monumental 
city of the dead that I have ever seen on the globe lies 
between Australia and South America. It is twelve 
miles long and seven miles wide, and has steadily grown 
smaller and smaller through countless aeons of time. 
This graveyard is more than a thousand miles from 
any other land and is called Easter Island. It is claimed 
by Chili, and is but a speck on the map of the world. 

On this island are monuments in the shape of a man 
— not one, but countless thousands — some not more 
than two feet high and others thirty-seven feet high, 
carved from a rich lava stone, quarried from the small 
volcanic mountains on the western end of the island. 
These monuments are too old and too much worn by 
the plural actions of the elements and time to allow 
one to decipher any inscriptions upon them. I spent 
several months wandering among them in the vain en- 
deavor. Some yet lay in the quarries ready to erect, 
but they rest now, as their builders left them, ages ago. 
As the sea encroached upon these monuments they 



322 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

tumbled into it, and the beaches of the whole island are 
covered with them and are whitened by the countless 
thousands of yet undecayed human teeth. The bones 
are but dust and cannot be handled or measured, but 
they belong to an orthognathus-j awed white race. And 
this race understood the higher branches of dental surg- 
ery, for I found bridge work, and teeth so perfectly 
crowned with a porcelain substance that you could 
not, with the naked eye, discern the junction. You 
could pick up a hat full of them in a day's search on 
the beaches. On the breast plates of these great statues 
of men and women you can trace faint outlines of men's 
faces, pictured in the sun, and from this fact I con- 
ceived the idea that they were sun-worshippers. 

I believe that early man was a sun-worshipper, from 
the facts I shall here present. " On the first day God 
made the light. And on the fourth day the sun and 
moon were created." God made two great lights, the 
greater to rule the day and the lesser to rule the night. 
Now without these lights nothing could exist on this 
earth, and God has promised that the power of neither 
sun nor moon shall injure the children of earth, in 
these words : " The sun shall not smite them by day, 
nor the moon by night." No pure-blooded man of the 
living soul with an unsullied conscience need fear either. 
(See Psalms, 121-6.) 

Easter Island is in latitude 27° 8' south and longi- 
tude 109° 25' west, more than 2,500 miles west of Chili 
and over a thousand miles from Pitcairn's Island, far 
out of the usual tracks of vessels, in the desert sea, as 
it is called by sailors. After a careful survey of it, 
I came to the conclusion that this island was once in 
the direct pathway between America and the western 
world, or new world, as I shall call it. That these 
ancient Americans, these civilized people, these early 
Mound-builders carried their religion and their works 
of art to the new world, we have many proofs. In 
Mexico and other South American states and through- 
out Central America there are regions covered with 
pyramids, of which those of Egypt are the exact pat- 
terns, and after having visited Egypt and gazed at her 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 323 

pyramids, then at those of America, you feel that the 
builders were one and the same. 

One of the most striking facsimiles of a statue can 
be seen at Siva and Parvati on the Island of the Ele- 
phants, between Bombay and the mainland, about seven 
miles from Bombay. Here is an artificial cave, whose 
mouth is sixty feet wide and eighteen feet high; you 
enter and see carvings of colossal elephants. One carved 
elephant stands at the mouth of the cave and is now 
rapidly decaying, and farther inside stands the statue 
of the father and mother of the human race. It repre- 
sents the binding of the soul of man and woman into 
one, when the two are made one at marriage. 

The ancient Aryan Hindu believed that at death the 
souls of the man and woman blended and became one, 
just as two drops of water run together and become 
one. The woman could not marry again at the death 
of her husband and he could not enter into the bliss of 
Paradise until her soul joined his and became one. 
This statue commemorates this event. One half of it 
is man, one half is woman ; the two making a perfect 
being. Drop a veil over one half and only a perfect 
man is seen; shift the veil and hide the man, and the 
perfect woman appears. 

In the winter of I860 I came upon a similar statue, 
carved in solid iron granite in a great niche in a ruined 
temple in the wild and unexplored region near the mouth 
of the Ulna River in Honduras, about forty-five miles 
due south. The work was rough and worn by the hand 
of time, but it was one and the same in every particular. 

Far up in the wilds of the Gangri Mountains, in a 
rocky glen of a spur of these mountains connecting the 
Gangri with the Himalayas, I have wandered among my 
Zuni plateau cliff-dwellers. The style of their houses 
and their pottery utensils were so perfect a reproduc- 
tion, that I could almost hear the voices of my little 
Comanche playmates with whom I roamed, a captive, 
in my early boyhood. The finding of this statue — this 
sculptured form of Siva the man, and Parvati the 
woman — on the Island of the Elephants on the coast 
of India in latitude 18° 57' north and longitude 73° 



324 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

east; the sight of the shnilar Honduran Siva and Par- 
vati statue of a colossal size, overlooking the great 
plain of Sala in latitude 15° 20'' north and longitude 
87° 40' west in far-off Central America — almost at the 
very Antipodes ; and the tracing of the cliff-dwellers of 
the Zuni plateau of Arizona and New Mexico, to the 
Gangri on the headquarters of the Yang-tse River in 
far-off China — all this evidence confirms my theory. 

In the ancient ruins of the cliff-dwellers of China I 
noticed an improvement in the stucco work on the walls 
and ceilings in their rooms, as well as the softer tones 
and colorings of the glazing of their pottery ware. The 
stucco work on the walls and ceilings was exceedingly 
smooth and fine, showing that it had been made with 
tools or moulds, while that in the caves on the Zuni 
plateau was coarse, uneven, and plainly showed the 
finger prints and other hand marks of the artisans. 
Many of the designs in the two localities were identical, 
the scrolls and patterns being of wonderful similarity — 
almost as close as the letters of a book. 

These facts — the silent medals of a pre-historic peo- 
ple preserved in unyielding stone — speak louder to us 
than any chronicled story penned by living man ; they 
are silent, voiceless and unchangeable through count- 
less centuries, and they plainly show us that at that day 
there was a grander civilization than we, with all our 
pomp and splendor, can ever attain, for these are works 
that cannot be duplicated by hirelings, but only by 
slavery or forced labor. 



WHAT BECAME OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS? 

Miscegenation the true causes of their disappearance — 
Moses and the Israelites — A warning to this nation — The 
Negro. 

What became of the Mound-builders? They mi- 
grated, and their descendants set their slaves free, and 
then miscegenated with them and begat the yellow or 
mixed races we now see scattered over the earth's sur- 
face. 

The above question and the answer is in accord with 
the medals of nature, and the proofs recorded in both 
sacred and profane history, and is deduced from more 
than three score years of close personal observation 
and study, and an experience on most of the great is- 
lands, and among the people of nearly every clime 
under the sun. 

Yes, the true cause of their disappearance — robbed 
of clouds and seen in the light of truth — was misce- 
genation. They mingled their pure Aryan blood with 
their slaves, lowered their brain capacity, and changed 
their clear, rosy-white complexion, soft yellow hair, and 
finer fiber of mind and body, to that of the cloudy, flat- 
nosed savage, yellow, or red man, where every beastly 
instinct and desire that is inherited from both parents 
is fostered and exaggerated, and every good quality is 
thoroughly obliterated. Yes, this miscegenated race 
retains every mean quality of both parents, and eschews 
all of the good ; they are an accursed race, and can 
never rise to the level of the pure-blooded white man. 

These miscegenated beings can never plan, build or 
produce the great works of the pure Aryan or Anglo- 
Saxon. They have not the brain capacity and they 
are a cursed race. Instead of building and beautifying 
a country they tear down and destroy, and spread ruin 
and desolation on every hand. 

325 



326 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

Who can read ancient history and not be impressed 
with the terrible doings of these yellow or red savages? 
They spread their poisoned spawn over the earth in 
countless numbers, and seem to multiply as do the insect 
world; they are the offspring of sin, and as such they 
are sent as punishment to us. 

When Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt 
into the Holy Land he was driven back by the warhke 
hordes who inhabited that region, for his men were not 
soldiers, they knew nothing of the use of arms, they 
had been slaves too long under their Egyptian task- 
masters. Moses saw this as soon as he attempted to 
enter the land of promise, so like the great general he 
was, he led his people back into the wilderness, and for 
forty years, or a whole generation, he drilled and hard- 
ened them until he had one of the best armies that ever 
trod the earth. They were desert-born and desert -bred, 
capable of standing any kind of fare or fatigue, and 
when he again led them up against the owners of the 
land, these owners were as chaff before the wind. 

Who can read the Biblical account of the sacking of 
the cities of the promised land by these desert-bred 
soldiers, murdering of the male defenders and the ap- 
propriation of the women to gratify their beastly lusts 
and desires, the liasons of King David and the lecherous 
personality of the Wise Man, without finding a cause 
for the lowering and fall of the chosen people of 
God.'' Yes, a cause for their fall from the high plane of 
the rulers of the earth to that of homeless wanderers, 
without a country, without a land, from the fall of 
their beautiful temple to this day. Not only were they 
barred from their sacred tabernacle and holy of holies 
for ten generations, or for three hundred and thirty 
years, but almost two thousand years have elapsed, and 
many more will roll away ere the curse of Pariah will 
be removed, and they can again build their altars and 
firesides in the land of promise. Such is the decree of 
fate ; such the decree of nature ; such the mandate of 
Almighty God. 

Not only the Israelites, the chosen people of God, 
but every other people and nations of every clime under 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 327 

the sun have suffered from this miscegenation. It is 
to-day sapping the Hfe blood of the people of this 
proud, beautiful republic of the United States, and 
if we do not take cognizance of it soon, we, too, will 
follow the fate of the Mound-builders, the Egyptians, 
the Greeks and the Romans. 

Their examples are before us, and as surely as the 
seasons obey the equinoxes of the sun, and seedtime and 
harvest, and cold and heat, summer and winter, day 
and night follow, will this nation be in peril, and sink 
into obhvion, for and by that same great overshadow- 
ing cause that is the prime factor in the death of all 
nations. 

To-day we are living under, and are governed by the 
laws of Moses, of the ancient Greeks and Romans ; they 
still find places in our common law books. In this, the 
twentieth century of the Christian era, we still use 
these laws as text books in our common schools and col- 
leges, because we can find no better or grander similes 
than are given in the Homeric poems, those of Virgil, 
and the fiery orations of Demosthenes, Cicero and 
Tacitus. They fire the brain and lend grace to the 
tongues of our youths. 

Surely these people of a bygone age must have had 
wonderful brain capacity, chaste and beautiful ideas, 
and grand modes of expression, thus to hold us spell- 
bound in this far-away age. Who were they.? We see 
their sculptured forms and painted likenesses, still clear 
and distinct, upon the walls of their homes in the land 
of their nativity. Yes, almost speaking likenesses, 
they look down upon us in all their godlike grandeur, 
just as they appeared in life, two thousand years ago. 
And they were men, men of the white race, men of 
brain, men of pure mesokephalic skulls and straight 
jaws, with fine white bones, slender and fair. 

And who are the descendants of these great men? 
Who inhabit their old homesteads? Who are the in- 
heritors of their estates? Let us look at them closely. 
The average Greek of to-day is a brachykephalic-skulled 
being with yellow, red or swarthy skin, long, coarse, 
black or kinky hair, with thick protruding jaw and 



328 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

soft nose, somewhat flattened. And what of the de- 
scendants and inheritors of the noble Romans? Where 
and what are they? One simple word tells the tale, 
" Dagoes." 

What brought about these conditions? What sank 
these grand, great nations to their present level? There 
is but one answer; they set their slaves free and then 
miscegenated. They attained their greatness through 
the labor of their slaves. Under the management 
of overseer, or taskmaster, the Grecian owner had 
ample time for study and recreation, without having 
to labor with his hands to procure food and clothing 
for the sustenance of himself and family. His slave 
labor produced this in superabundance. 

These conditions changed when he set his slaves free, 
and his downfall was assured when he mingled his pure 
Aryan blood with that of these low dolichokephalic- 
skulled, prognathus-j awed, thick-hpped, woolly-haired 
black Africans. It needs but a glance at these people 
to convince anyone with ordinary intellect that I am 
right in my declaration, that it was the sin of mis- 
cegenation that caused this great change in these once 
noble people. 

The pure-blooded white man steps out on the stage 
of life the highest and the brainiest and most capable of 
attaining to the loftiest planes of all the arts of civiliza- 
tion ; he alone is able to command and compel the lower 
beings to obey his mandates. All other races are sub- 
servient to him and have been since God gave him the 
power, as he left the doors of the Ark, upon the sub- 
sidence of the deluge. 

He stands upon the most elevated plane of humanity, 
and will so stand as long as he keeps his blood pure 
and uncontaminated. Riches and power and true glory 
are his for all time if he but obeys the mandates of 
God. When he corrupts these mandates by debaucher}^ 
and disregards that law, given at creation's dawn, that 
" Like shall beget like, each after his kind," and, with 
his wealth and power, furnishes a harem, as King Solo- 
mon did, of many wives and concubines of every hue 
and blood, and leaves a progeny behind who are merely 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 329 

the offspring of sinful lusts and beastly desires, Al- 
mighty God curses this progeny with every vile instinct 
of both parents, and cancels every one of the good. 
This debauched progeny thus cursed, begets only the 
low bom, " each after his kind," until but a few gener- 
ations elapse ere the nation is sunk into oblivion. Yes, 
into the dark vales of unenlightened savagery, from 
which no power on earth can ever lift it again. 

This poisoned race, this scum of the earth, is omni- 
present in our midst, and we are constantly inviting 
them from the overcrowded cities of Europe, Asia, and 
Africa, and by mixing our pure, white, Anglo-Saxon 
blood with this lower element, we are lowering our brain 
pans and our standards of civilization, and inviting self- 
destruction. 

We are catering to a cold, half-bred, half-civilized 
people, whom we could not in a thousand years bring to 
perfection. One drop of this soulless, miscegenated 
race of mixed blood has leavened the whole, and it is 
not in the power of man to create what God has not. 

Our laws are not stringent enough. Some of our States 
permit the union of the pure-blooded Anglo-Saxon with 
the thick-lipped, woolly-haired black negro, only a 
shade above the chattering monkey, and not half as 
sanitary. Again they permit their bastard-born pro- 
geny to enjoy all the privileges of the most favored of 
the land. This is against the laws of God, and we as a 
nation must in the end suffer for it. 

These " bastards," for they are bastards ; they are 
not begotten " each after his kind," as commanded by 
God, neither in the image or likeness of father or mother, 
but are merely " go-betweens," neither white nor black, 
but yellow abortions, children of sin, and cursed as were 
the offspring of Cain whose sins brought about the de- 
struction of the world by a flood when the earth was 
young, to purify it from this very sin committed by 
Cain. 

How foul and abhorrent to the father and mother of 
the pure-blooded Anglo-Saxon is the idea that their 
gentle, delicate, fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter is wed 
to one of these black brutes, with his thick, long, narrow 



330 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

skull, protruding, beastly jaws, fresh from his African 
wilderness. Does it not send a shudder through your 
inmost fiber, even to contemplate the idea ; though he 
may be the son of a pure-blooded African chief, or a 
jungle king. 

The cold, repugnant horror of the thing is the same. 
The mulatto breed, that spring from the union of the 
black and white, will continue to propagate a yellow race 
throughout infinite ages ; because the immutable law of 
Nature works the same in tree, plant, fish, bird, beast 
and man alike, and the qualities inherited from their 
parents descend to their offspring through all time. 
None know this better than our skilled gardeners, poul- 
try fanciers, the breeders of cattle, sheep, dogs, and 
the race and. trotting horses of our common country. 
We can plainly see that the miscegenation of the white 
and black beings of earth in the mould of man, does and 
will produce every race on the globe ; yes, every variety 
of the genus homo on this old earth. 

Take the white and black, mingle their blood, and you 
get a yellow being ; neither white nor black. Mingle the 
yellow and black and you get a red or brown ; now 
mingle the white and yellow and you get a being neither 
white nor yellow, but of a muddy hue. And so on, until 
you produce all kinds and classes, as well as shades of 
people ; and these will beget like and like, " each after 
his kind," through infinity, after the tenth generation. 

These beings thus begotten invariably inherit all the 
mean and none of the good qualities of their primal 
progenitors. I am able (by long years of travel, and 
residence among these miscegenated beings, in many 
climes and countries), and I positively assert that I can 
take a dozen members, both male and female, all per- 
fect representatives of their people or tribes, selected 
from all parts of China, Japan, the various South Sea 
Islanders, the Manchurians, Eskimos, Terra del Fue- 
gans, Arabs, Bedouins, Peruvians, Mexicans, North 
American Indians, Hindus, Egyptians, Greeks and Da- 
goes — yes, from any part of the earth — dress them all 
alike, or stand them up in a state of nudity before a 
congress of the most skilled anatomists of the whole 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 331 

world, and they could not tell but that they all were of 
the same parentage and from the same country, judg- 
ing entirely by their anatomy and color, size and general 
characteristics. 

It is an impossibility to distinguish a particle of dif- 
ference in any one of them, for I tried for twenty-seven 
years faithfully to do so, with everything in my favor, 
and I could find none. So I feel safe in saying and in 
declaring that there is none. I visited the frozen shores 
of Greenland, of Siberia, of Terra del Fuego, and all 
the coasts and interior regions of North, Central, and 
South America; and the same in Africa, and Australia 
and many of the great islands of the Pacific Ocean ; and 
amid the mountains and plains of Asia, and I think that 
I have a right to express my conclusions. 

It is not a fact that climate changes the color of a 
people, for if this were so, the yellow and black and red 
Eskimos of Greenland, and the yellow, red and dark- 
skinned natives of Terra del Fuego should be the whitest 
on earth. Every condition for bleaching and whiten- 
ing them exists in these cold, cloudy, snowy, icy regions. 
I cannot help giving an incident that will convey an 
idea of the denizens of that cold, damp country that 
surrounds the south end of South America. 

I was on the Beagle Channel, in that region of almost 
constant rain or snow ; for one or the other seems to be 
falling fully half the days of the year. I was making 
a survey of the surrounding country, which is but a 
rocky, wooded, slippery, broken, worthless waste, and 
we were in constant contact with the miserable, half- 
starved men, women and children that inhabit that God- 
forsaken land. I have seen the naked women sitting 
upon the shelving rocks that dip into the sea, nursing 
their babes, not a week old, with the snow falling upon 
them, and making a stream down their breasts, as the 
babe drew its sustenance from their paps. They were 
as contented and happy as their more favored sisters of 
a warm tropic clime. 

These people often suffer from hunger in its worst 
form ; they live upon fish, and prefer the blubber of a 
spoiled or rotten whale to any other delicacy on earth. 



332 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

I gave a rotten, worm-eaten ham, that weighed sixteen 
pounds, to a boy of not more than ten years of age, and 
at one sitting he ate the whole of it, and I beheve that 
he would have eaten more if it had been offered him. 
They kill and eat their old men and women in times of 
famine. I saw plenty of dogs among them, and I asked 
why they did not eat them instead of their grandmas 
and grandpas. They rephed, " Old man or old woman 
no good ; dog catch otter." And it is thus with most of 
these people of the yellow, red or black tribes of earth, 
but especially so with those who inhabit a cold, bleak, 
inhospitable clime; they are prone to become cannibals 
to sustain life. 

There is a fact about the negro, the yellow and the 
red and brown men that I have not seen commented 
upon ; they cannot distinguish between right and wrong. 
In other words, they have no conscience — that still, 
small, that divine spark, inherent in the soul of the pure- 
blooded white man, which enables him to distinguish 
right from wrong in its minutest form; that dictates 
what to pursue, and what to shun, and when we are 
guilty of wrong doing, haunts our sleeping or waking 
dreams, and disturbs our every thought. 

This " soul fire," this flame breathed into the white 
man when he was first created, yea, first wakened from 
creation's womb, is sadly lacking in the yellow, red and 
black races all over the earth. That soul fire was made 
alone for the pure white man ; and he can only convey it 
to his kind. That something created by God for him 
alone, he can convey to his own pure-blooded offspring, 
bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, a true reproduc- 
tion after his kind, but he cannot convey this living soul 
to the low, dolichokephalic-skulled, prognathus-jawed 
negro, nor to the brachykephalic-skulled, yellow or red 
man; for they are not each after his kind, and are not 
like Noah, " perfect in their generation." They are the 
offspring of two distinct races of mankind, neither 
" after his kind," and it is impossible for man to create 
what God did not, and what God has positively for- 
bidden. Yes, it is against the law of God, and man's 
sinful lusts and desires cannot overcome that fiat of 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 333 

" omniscience." Every command and law given us since 
creation's dawn has been fulfilled, and every trespass 
thereof has been punished. 

The pure, white, mesokephalic races of earth are fol- 
lowers of the meek and lowly Jesus, and at the com- 
mand of Christ, they have preached His name and doc- 
trines to every nation and people on earth, and to-day 
in every land and clime the spires of the temples of the 
living God point to heaven. But in no yellow, red or 
black country has Christ been universally accepted ; 
while you cannot find a white country or a white people 
on the face of the whole globe which does not univer- 
sally accept Him as their Lord and Saviour. 

Does not this fact alone speak louder than a trum- 
pet's blast, or the roar of a cannon? The yellow, red 
or black races have no souls, and neither can the white 
man give them one. They cannot conceive or under- 
stand the meaning of the hidden or invisible things 
taught by the followers of Christ. It is beyond their 
comprehension, for they only understand those things 
that are visible. 

These are cold, real facts. They stand before us 
now, and have so stood since Cain mingled his blood with 
that of his Nodite wife, and begat the first misce- 
genated being or bastard of the conscienceless breed 
that ever trod the earth. 

There is no truth more firmly held than " like begets 
like, each after his kind." I well know that many who 
read this work will think that I am prejudiced, and am 
radical in my views, especially on this subject of "the 
living soul " ; but I am not. They think it a dangerous 
theory to promulgate, and I know that the great band 
of Christians, who compose our so-called foreign mis- 
sions, will bring all their " big guns " to bear on me, 
but I will not flinch, for I know that I am right. The 
cold, naked facts are ever before me, in all their stem 
reality. 

I am opposed to foreign missions, and look upon them 
as a colossal humbug, so far as converting a nation of 
yellow, red, black or tan people to the worship, or the 
understanding, or the comprehension, of the true mean- 



334 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

ing of the Bible as given to us, is concerned, and I think 
it a sacrilege to even try to make these soulless beings 
pretend to comprehend it. I do not pretend to say that 
these earnest but mistaken missionaries do not do these 
poor benighted and soulless savages some good by teach- 
ing them to wear clothes, to cleanse their bodies, and to 
live in sanitary surroundings. Thus far they civilize 
and make them better, but outside of this their life's 
work is a dismal failure. 

The parrot and jackdaw can be taught to mumble a 
prayer, and a monkey, dog, horse, elephant, or other 
animal can be taught to go through the act of devo- 
tional kneeling, as if in worship of a divinity. And 
these yellow, red, black and tan anthropoids are on an 
exact and even plane with beasts of the forest ; their 
worship is only a mimicry, and is in reality a sacrilege, 
a sacrilege of the most holy of holies, a mockery of the 
most sacred things bequeathed to the men of the " liv- 
ing soul " by their great Creator and His crucified 
Son. 

You may belt the earth, as I have, and wherever the 
white man has his habitat, there you will find the Chris- 
tian religion is supreme, and the crucified Christ is their 
guide. For a thousand years the white man and his 
ancestors have been trying to bring the black, yellow, 
and red and brown into the true fold of the Redeemer 
and they are no nearer now than they were a thousand 
years ago. They are of course better off and better 
cared for under the refining influence of the Christian 
men and women, than they would be in their native wilds 
and jungles and living on doodle bugs, roots and 
reptiles. 

But you can never make a pure white man of a mixed 
race ; and the great danger to the white race will come 
when this miscegenated race shall have become so white 
that they cannot be distinguished from the pure blood 
only by the closest scrutiny. The world is full of these 
miscegenated and mixed races, and we can see how they 
have destroyed nations that were once civilized and en- 
lightened. 

We can look back down the dim aisles of time and see 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 335 

the beautiful ruins of the Aryan cities and kingdoms of 
ancient America, of Japan, China, India, Persia, Arabia, 
Egypt, Greece, Rome and Spain, as shown by their 
sculptured busts and paintings ; all these were once 
under the reign of the pure white Aryan, but they are 
now peopled by hordes of miscegenated yellow, brown, 
or red half-civilized, conscienceless semi-barbarians, 
knowing and caring as little about the magnificent ruins 
around them as the nomadic red men of our western 
plains, or the black, woolly-haired, tulip-lipped cannibal 
of the jungles of the Congo. 

Were it not for the God-given instinct of the females 
of the pure Aryan white race, that warns them against 
lowering their progeny to a level beneath them by con- 
tact with the males of the plane under them ; were it 
not for this very attribute, bom with the immortal soul 
and inherited by every pure Aryan white female, that 
mother instinct that protects their young even at the 
sacrifice of life itself, there would not to-day be a pure 
white man on this earth. 

The male of any genus of man, bird, beast, or animal 
cares little about the color, or kind of female momen- 
tarily his partner, or that he may form a temporary 
alliance with. Nor does the color or condition of his 
progeny that may spring from this alliance deter him 
in the least from the gratification of his sinful lusts or 
beastly desires. 

The same mother-instinct that guards the pure white 
woman and keeps us white, is also present in the females 
of the lower orders of the black, yellow, red or brown, 
and is just as strong; but she uses it to lift her progeny 
to a higher plane, yes, to a higher, grander plane than 
the one she herself occupies. The white man stands 
upon the very highest of all the planes of humanity, 
hence the black, yellow, red or brown woman is ever 
ready, yes, constantly seeks to be the companion, mo- 
mentarily, of the white male in every country under the 
sun, for she feels that her offspring from this union 
will have a whiter, softer, fairer skin, and stand on a 
higher plane than she herself does. And as I have be- 
fore remarked, this instinct in the woman guards her, 



336 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

protects her offspring and keeps us white, for if the 
white female were as lewd as the males of her race, there 
would not be a white man in America to-day. We would 
all be the offspring of soulless sin. 

In every yellow, red, black or tan country in the 
world, if you, being of the male gender and of the white 
race, are an invited guest of the head of the family, or 
of the chief or patriarch of the tribe or camp, the women 
of the household are a part of the hospitalities extended 
to you. This is a universal law, and it holds good in all 
lands and climes inhabited by the colored races. You 
can take China, Japan, Manchuria, Hindustan, Arabia, 
Egypt, the islands of the Pacific, the regions of Africa, 
North, Central and South America, including Mexico, 
and it is the same. 

We can plainly see in the miscegenation of the slave 
and her master, the absolute primal cause of the deca- 
dence of the nations. Sacred and profane history teach 
it to us in their every page, and the medals of nature 
and the testimony of the rocks and of the ruined cities 
of the whole world confirm it. I reassert, that it was not 
plague, pestilence, nor famine, battle, murder, nor sud- 
den death, that destroyed the ancient Mound-builders, 
the builders of the pyramids of Egypt, and the other 
magnificent ruined cities of this and other lands ; but the 
miscegenation of the white and black races. 

It is not necessary to prolong this argument to any 
greater length, nor to add further proof to my theory. 
The personal observations of countless thousands of 
thinking travelers around the world bear me out in my 
contentions. You can see right in our midst, and call 
to mind, yes, in your own memory, some well-known 
family that has fallen from its high estate by the mar- 
riage of one member of it to one of an inferior grade. 
It is the same with cattle, horses, dogs, birds, and the 
whole brute creation. 

These mongrels are on every hand ; the mean qualities 
of their parents cropping out in their progeny in an 
exaggerated form. The bastard of the Bible was a 
miscegenated being, not begotten after his kind, and 
this soulless creature was not allowed in the temple, nor 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 337 

was he allowed to touch any of the holy things, no, not 
even to the tenth generation. It takes ten generations 
for the miscegenated breed to attain its equilibrium, in 
other words to attain that point where like will beget 
like, each after his kind. And this means from three 
hundred and thirty to four hundred years. 

It cannot be too strongly emphasized, or kept before 
the eyes of the civilized world, that we must be ever on 
guard if we wish to keep our present standard of civil- 
ization up to the high mark set us by our pure white 
forefathers, and continue on the same plane. We are 
surrounded on every hand by a thick-lipped, woolly- 
haired, black, dolichokephalic, prognathus- jawed race, 
and their miscegenated descendants, and they are ever 
on the increase ; this corroding dross, this baleful, pois- 
oned, blighting, accursed cloud, hangs like a dark incu- 
bus over us. 

Yes, this corroding dross, this deadly scum, is fester- 
ing and polluting our whole body politic, and if not 
brought to a standstill, and destroyed, or curbed in some 
way, it will wreck our civilization and place us on the 
list of the departed Mound-builders. For the blight to 
us is like the withering blasts of the simoom of the 
Sahara desert to the tender herb. 

None know this better than those who live in the great 
" black belts " of the earth, where they are in constant 
daily contact with this negro anthropoid, and none un- 
derstand less and have less appreciation of the danger 
that surrounds them than those who only here and 
there come in contact with a few isolated wanderers. 
From these specimens they get only a very faint idea of 
the real negro, for these wandering specimens are the 
greatest mimics on the face of the earth and the most 
deceptive. 

The facts are before us, that these anthropoids, made 
in the image and after the likeness of the white man, 
have been under the influence of the white man and his 
civilization, all over the world, for tens of thousands of 
years, and yet they nor their descendants have ever 
profited by this contact in the least degree when that 
contact ceased. 



338 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

Education only makes them weaker and shows their 
short-comings in a more glaring light and a more pro- 
nounced form. Full and absolute freedom is a curse to 
a negro ; he must have a taskmaster, someone who has 
the power to make him go and do ; remove this power 
and you spoil a good laborer and a faithful worker. 

England, a century ago, after civilizing. Christianiz- 
ing, and thoroughly educating them to their full brain 
capacity, set them free and built them cities, towns, 
schools, and churches ; the whole Christianized people of 
the world lent them aid. And what has been the outcome 
of this costly experiment.'' Their schools, colleges and 
churches are in ruins and the abodes of bats and owls, 
and their towns and cities have gone to decay. The 
proteges of the most civilized and powerful people on 
earth, they are again back upon the same low plane 
from whence they sprung. It is argued by some that it 
was the curse of slavery that sank them into their pres- 
ent state; but this is an absurd fallacy, and I deny it 
emphatically. Where are they the most degraded.'' 
Where are they only one degree above the gibbon mon- 
key? Where are they the freest people on the face of 
the earth? I answer, in the wilds of the African jun- 
gles, their native habitat. 

Yes, here they are only a shade above the brute 
creation, and no chain of slavery has even fettered limb 
or thought since the dawn of their creation. They are 
as free as the birds of the air or the wild beasts of the 
plains. Yes, there in the land of their birth in the jun- 
gles of Africa, they have always been free. And yet 
for ten thousand years they have not advanced one step 
upon the plane of civilization; they are to-day just as 
they were when Noah turned them out of the Ark, not 
one sign of improvement in any form; just as creation's 
dawn beheld them, they remain. 

They live among the animals, and are a part of them ; 
they have never tamed an elephant, or horse, and made 
him bear a burden ; they have never made a garment to 
cover their nakedness, they go in a state of nudity, and 
plaster their hair and bodies with mud to protect them- 
selves from insects — the swine do the same; there are 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 339 

no mounds, no walls, no ruins of any kind, erected or 
planned by these free-born sons of the African wilds; 
no letter, figure or symbol or sound ever recorded by 
these low-bom, stationary people, who have been free, 
and yet in contact with civilization and civilized men for 
for more than 4000 years. As yet they have never ad- 
vanced one step in any direction, save when compelled 
by the lash of a taskmaster. 

They are at constant war with one another, but it is 
not a war for betterment of government, not to rid the 
land of a tyrant king ; but war for the same causes that 
impel the brute creation to fight one another. 

It is a notorious fact now present before the civilized 
world, that when these creatures are taken from their 
jungle wilds and taught by civilized men, given the 
books and arts of the nations who invented them, and 
taught the use of fire-arms, and then returned to their 
native land and tribes, they only retain that which is 
most low and brutal of all they have been given by their 
civilized teachers. They seem to forget the good, and 
only retain the bad. When they reach their old homes 
from the land of civilization they direct their superior 
knowledge to their own aggrandizement, and not for the 
betterment of their kindred, or their fellow-beings. 

The negro in his native state has never invented any- 
thing ; they are wonderful imitators and mimics, equaled 
only by the Japs and Chinese. The latter stand above 
them on a far higher plane of humanity, as they possess 
a far greater brain capacity, and have one half of the 
white man's blood in their veins. Yet the negro is far 
more gentle, docile and obedient in every respect, and 
really less brutal and savage, than the Jap or China- 
man, for these miscegenated beings retain all the mean 
qualities of both the negro and the white man, and none 
of the good. 

The negro is not of a progressive, but of a defacto, 
stationary race. We have only to view Hayti or Ja- 
maica, under the rule of these anthropoids, to prove the 
facts of our assertions. The helping hand, and the 
example of every civilized and Christianized nation of 
earth, have been stretched out to aid them and to look 



340 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

after their welfare, but they have only sunk lower and 
deeper into the shades of ignorance and superstition. 

We have had a whole century of experience and prac- 
tice before us. Under the rigid rule of the Egyptians, 
the Greeks, and Romans, and I may say Spanish mas- 
ters, and then under the French and English, and lastly 
under our own Southern guidance, they were the hap- 
piest and most care-free beings on earth. They had 
good, well-ventilated houses, well-cooked food, and 
warm sanitary clothing, and a master's hand to guide 
them and minister to their every want. Under these 
conditions they prospered, and were a source of wealth, 
profit, and pleasure to themselves and to their masters. 
They could imitate every movement of " Old Massa " 
to perfection, even to the intonation of his voice, and 
followed in his footsteps in the most minute manner. 

Now who can say that these creatures were not bene- 
fited by the guidance, example, and teaching of their 
Southern masters .? Let us survey the environments of 
these thick-lipped, woolly-haired, black savages, as 
they appeared to us when freshly landed from the jun- 
gles of Africa, a few short decades ago. 

We took them from the decks and holds of New 
England ships, manned by New England sailors and 
owned by New England merchants ; I have myself 
bought them from these New England blockade runners, 
when the poor black creatures were unable to walk from 
being cramped up in the hold of the vessel so long hid- 
ing from the cruisers of different countries, and only 
paid one dollar per pound for them. They were naked 
and emaciated; many hardly able to raise themselves to 
a sitting posture, much less to stand. Now I took these 
poor creatures, nursed and clothed and fed them, and 
taught them how to work, to talk, and to wear clothing, 
and as far as lay in their power to be civilized Christians. 
At least I taught them to imitate, and to go through the 
form of worship and to practice the modes and customs 
of civilized beings. 

For two hundred years the planters and citizens of 
the South pursued the same course with these savages 
and their progeny, and at the close of the great Con- 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 341 

federate war, when these slaves were forcibly taken 
from us by the armies of the North and turned loose 
upon the world to wander at will, they were not the same 
low savages that were brought from the jungles of 
Africa. But they were the most civilized black sav- 
ages that have trod the earth since the Egyptian era of 
the Pharaohs, and the most Christianized since the birth 
of Christ. 

Now, after a lapse of forty years, these same savage 
beings are sapping and lowering the brain pans of the 
very people, and their descendants, who set them free. 
Viewing all the facts, in the light of modern research, 
with the ever-present and visible truth before us, and the 
fate of Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Spain staring us 
in the face, cannot an intelligent, enlightened and ob- 
servant people see the true causes that led to the over- 
throw, not only of these more modem civilized people, 
but to those far away Mound-builders of the old world 
in North America, and also her younger colonies in 
India, China, Persia, Arabia, and Egypt.? 

Can these yellow and red survivors, who now lead 
nomadic lives or live in tents and huts, construct such 
massive temples and beautiful statuary as did their pure- 
white, civilized ancestry ? Have they any of these proud, 
god-like forms or creatures before them as models from 
which to fashion their modern statuary.-^ Look at their 
present work and see the answer graven there. Behold 
the hideous images of the yellow, savage Aztecs, and 
under them the chaste and beautiful carvings of their 
ancestors, before miscegenation spread her dark cor- 
rupting blight over the land, and left it an accursed and 
ruined region. 

To me it is passing strange that among the thou- 
sands of learned ethnologists who have written tomes 
upon the subject of the different races, so-called, of men 
who have peopled the earth, not one, in the past twenty 
centuries, has ever advanced the true idea of the exact 
cause of the decay and the destruction of the nations. 

They have been too easily led astray by the thoughts 
and reasonings of those gone before. If we will only 
look at the real cause which I assert, how easily and how 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

plainly do the facts present themselves to the thinking, 
reasoning mind. We can look around, right here in our 
midst, and see Indians, Chinamen, Japanese and mixed 
men of every nation ; all bom here, reared and living 
in our midst, whose parents and ancestors, for ten gen- 
erations back, have never come in contact, nor been in 
any way even associated with one of these yellow foreign- 
born people. And yet the most skillful anatomist, upon 
a close and careful examination, would pronounce them 
full-blooded offspring of one of these yellow, foreign- 
born people. After the black and white once mix, and 
the yellow tinge is made permanent, then the equilibrium 
of nature is attained, like begets like, each after his 
kind, to the end of time ; and they only change from the 
infusion of a darker, or a whiter blood into their veins. 
This readmixture of darker or whiter blood continued 
through ten generations attains its equilibrium, and a 
higher or a lower order or race is placed upon the 
earth, having a higher or lower order of intellect, as this 
progeny is nearer or farther from the intelligent white 
man or negro. 

There is no process of reasoning that can controvert 
this fact. A thousand generations will not remove the 
taint of negro blood in the veins, and restore to purity 
the polluted miscegenated race. Nor can it ever again 
sink to the level of the negro; for each drop of white 
blood raises the intellect of the lower order of humanity 
and each drop of negro blood lowers it. The progeny 
of the negro and the white race, as I have before re- 
marked, are the true bastards, the originals of Biblical 
lore, because this offspring is not like either parent, and 
is not after either kind, neither white nor black, but a 
separate and distinct being, hence being equal white and 
equal black, a product in which nature has assimilated 
an exact division of both. Being so begotten, this crea- 
ture is a " child of sin," and inherits only the vicious and 
mean brutal instincts of both parents, and not one of 
the good. It is produced contrary to the mandate of 
God; that mandate which commands every created 
thing that creepeth upon the earth to bring forth 
" each after his kind." And this creature is but an 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 343 

abortion — a mixed " thing," neither white nor black, 
and not after either kind. Nature fashioned him as 
near as it was possible, by mingling the two in equal 
proportions, but he is like neither parent. With these 
facts before us, can there be a doubt in the minds of 
anyone that miscegenation alone was the true cause 
that destroyed the Mound-builders.? It was the chief 
factor in the destruction of India, Persia, Arabia, 
Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Spain. A yellow race now 
occupies and roams amid the ruins of these once highly 
civilized and enlightened people. And we found a savage 
yellow people in possession of the homes of the ancient 
American Mound-builders. 



THE DARWINIAN THEORY 

The survival of the fittest — Empedocles precursor of Dar- 
win — Darwin theory tenable up to the eighth era of 
creation—" The Immortality of Love " — Darwin theory 
not in conflict with the Mosaic account of man's creation 
— The blessings of God — Eternity. 

Is Darwin's theory of the descent of man consistent 
with the Mosaic description of the creation, and is it 
tenable ? 

Before giving my answer to this, I will remark that 
Darwin had (if I may so call it) a master analytical 
mind. He delved far into the hidden mysteries of na- 
ture, and drank deep, until intoxicated with his 
draughts — then drank and sobered up again. 

No closer observer ever put his thoughts upon paper. 
Yet Darwin forgot his Great Creator, the Mighty Ruler 
of the universe, trusted all to chance and made the law 
of selection, and the survival of the fittest, his deity. 
On this hypothesis he based all his arguments. Tyndall, 
Huxley, Schmitt, and others followed, all in the same 
path. They all forgot that Master Hand that fash- 
ioned the universe, set the stars in their paths, and 
created boundless space, all subservient to His will. 

They forgot that it was at His command the worlds 
sprang into view. Our minds are too weak even to grasp 
a momentary conception of the vastness of His power. 
Is there any limit to the boundless space beyond the 
stars.? If so, who set the boundary lines, and can the 
boundary lines be set.? We know that there is a bound- 
ary to our vision, but what an illimitable space there is 
beyond it. As with our vision, so with our minds. We 
have not the vision to penetrate, nor the mind to con- 
template this vast boundless ocean of interstellar space. 
Nor can we comprehend the power or majesty of the 
Great Ruler who has his residence somewhere in the 
illimitable regions beyond our earthly vision. 

We cannot grasp nor comprehend the things that lie 
344 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 345 

beyond our mortal minds. Our Creator does not give 
us that power. We cannot wing our way to the distant 
stars and planets that glitter and shine in the vaults 
above us, each a far greater and grander world than the 
one we inhabit; yet our thoughts can fly, in a moment, 
to the most distant one that twinkles in our vision's 
range. This is our God-given privilege, as this is a 
part of our being, conferred upon us when we were given 
a part of Him, upon the eighth era of creation's dawn ; 
yes, when we became partakers of His kingdom, through 
the immortal soul that He breathed into our bodies. 

This mind, conscience, immortal soul, was not 
given to any of the countless thousands of the fourth, 
fifth, sixth or seventh day creatures of this world ; only 
to that one lone man that God placed in the Garden of 
Eden, to dress and to keep it, and to us, his pure-blooded 
descendants of the now present, bright eighth era. 

How long these days, eras, or aeons of creation were, 
we do not know, nor can we compute. Countless mil- 
lions of years, as we now reckon time, may have elapsed 
between each period. We may have been testaceans, 
mere testa, so minute that millions of us could have 
rested upon the point of a pin, in that first era of our 
creation, and happily lived and loved in the protoplasms 
of our shells, and densely covered the protozoan plane. 
And how small the deposits were from our decaying dust 
may be seen on the present bed of the ocean ; where the 
accumulations do not exceed an inch in a hundred years, 
and in places not the hundredth part of an inch in a 
century. 

Now, when we see these deposits of the testaceans, 
several thousand feet thick, and remember that they only 
formed at the rate of an inch, or the hundredth part of 
an inch, in a century, we can readily see the vast unend- 
ing line of centuries that have marched by with cease- 
less tread since our testacean ancestors first breathed 
and clung together in that dim and far-off era. 

And this testacean or monerian age had to pass to 
that of a higher Molluscan era ; and in the order of the 
Mollusca we can find the picture, the outline, the embryo 
of every bird, beast, or animal on the face of the earth. 



346 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

Every pattern is shown, even of the whole order of the 
Reptilia. The patterns shown are all in embryonic 
form, from the univalve conch to that of a man. The 
primal egg cell is there as well as the foetus, and it is not 
impossible, nay, is it not more than probable that from 
these early Mollusca all living creatures may have had 
their beginning ; may have sprung, and been guided and 
governed by cogenital surroundings of air, food and 
water, as well as climate. 

It would take too much time and space to go into the 
microscopic changes that lifted the testa from the pro- 
tozoan plane to the man of the present era. To carry 
him through the fish, bird and animal kingdom, up to 
the high plane of civilized man, is an unending task that 
only God can perform. But the Mosaic periods of the 
creation point to the different eras of their growth ; and 
when we view them in the light of clear, cold science, we 
have to acknowledge that there is much of truth in 
Darwin's theory. 

But Darwin was not the first, by thousands of years, 
to advance the theory of the descent of man from a 
conch, or the order of the Mollusca. The scholars and 
wise men of the Chaldeans and Egyptians, and the his- 
torians of those far-away days advanced and advocated 
the idea that all the fauna of the earth had their birth 
in the sea. 

The Assyrians regarded the Polyps, or male Argo- 
nauts, the common Nautilus, or Portuguese Man-of- 
War, as the ancestor of man ; and who after living for 
an age in its shell at sea, abandoned it and crept out on 
the land on some propitious shore, and transformed it- 
self into a bird, beast or man, just as it felt inclined, 
and as the surroundings and conditions suited. 

The historian and scientist Empedocles was the pre- 
cursor of Darwin, and Empedocles gathered his ideas 
from the myths and the mythological lore of those 
ancient people. He believed that all animals, birds, 
beasts and men were born and came up out of the sea ; 
that the polyp sailed over the waters of the ocean, and 
gathered those parts of himself that belonged to the 
peculiar head that his shell presented ; if his head was 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 347 

that of a bird he began and gathered the parts belong- 
ing to a bird, and if an animal, he would gather those, 
and if a man, he only gathered the components of a 
man. 

It is a singular fact that the heads of these little sail- 
ors do bear wonderful likenesses to various birds, beasts, 
as well as to men. I have handled hundreds of them, 
fresh from the sea, and have been struck with the 
strange resemblances they would present to men, birds 
and animals that I was familiar with. You can take a 
hundred of them fresh from your net and examine their 
faces carefully, and no two will be alike; you can dis- 
tinguished the different kinds of men, birds and animals 
that you have ever seen on the face of the earth, and 
the likenesses are so very perfect that you are aston- 
ished. 

You have a creepy feeling, as you look at a polyp, 
and remember what Empedocles says about it ; that it 
sailed over the seas and gathered from it the different 
parts of its body that suited its face, and then sailed to 
a clime and shore that was best and most congenial to 
the perfect development of the being that its face in- 
dicated ; here it would leave its shell and crawl out on the 
land, and in a hidden, secluded spot gradually assume 
the shape and life its creator intended. 

Many men retain the brutal instincts of their far- 
away ancestors, be they bird or beast. You have seen 
men whose faces resemble those of the lion, the eagle, 
the fox, the vulture, the dog, the parrot, or the monkey ; 
they are common ; and these very resemblances crop out 
and come to the fore upon any and every occasion. They 
intrude themselves upon every observant person. 

Do we get these habits of ours from instinct, or from 
cultivation, or do we inherit them from our polyp an- 
cestors? We see and feel them, know that they are 
present, yet from whence do they come.? 

Some may answer that they are God-given. This I 
do not deny. Others that all things are possible with 
Him ; this too is so ; yet the Great Creator never con- 
troverts His own laws, nor does He do anything that 
He would have to correct; He makes no mistakes, for 



348 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

He works from a perfect principle, hence all His works 
are perfect, and will so remain until the end of time. 

I am satisfied that much of Darwin's theory is tena- 
ble up to the eighth era of creation ; but since that long- 
ago period there has been no other development ; no 
new creation. God ended his work on the eighth day 
with the creation of the pure white female, as recited 
by Moses. Yes, He ended His work with the man of the 
living soul and his helpmate Eve, she the last and fairest 
of all His handiwork. 

Now for a higher and more perfect creature than 
Eve, we will have to look to a purer region and planet 
than ours, beyond the stars, where love, the great and 
best attribute of man, is the primal power that love is 
immortal, as declared in the Bible. 

Darwin has brought our forms from the lower order 
of the Mollusca atom in the testacean cell, into the broad 
open plain of the eighth era of God's work. When he 
brought the man of the living soul up from the dust of 
the earth and placed him in the beautiful Garden of 
Eden to dress and keep it, the Great Creator spread be- 
fore this man of the living soul the beauties and splen- 
dors of earth for examples to teach him how to dress 
and keep his earthly habitat. He spread carpets of 
flowers over the plains in all their variegated hues and 
tints. He put his bright rainbows as arched doorways, 
and he painted the clouds in ever changing hues, and 
hung them as canopies and curtains of beauty above 
him ; thus by daily and hourly teachings showed him how 
to make his home beautiful. Yea, commanding him to 
beautify his early home, to dress and keep it ; not only 
for his own individual benefit, but for the passerby. 
Yea, to dress and keep it beautiful and bright, befitting 
the example set him hourly by his heavenly Father. And 
we should consider it a sin not to copy after the work of 
the Great Architect, so truly and abundantly set be- 
fore us. 

Where is the being with a spark of the immortal soul 
glimmering in his bosom, that can gaze at the peaceful 
glow, with all varied hues and cloud dyes dancing in 
the west as the orb of day fades in the shadows of even- 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 



349 



ing twilight, and not feel the presence of that Master 
Hand tha' fashioned all things for His glory? And who 
can watch the forked lightning's flash and hear the deep 
thunders roll and crash in the ether vaults above without 
knowing m the inmost recesses of his heart that there 
IS a great governing power, a power beyond our mortal 
ken, that set these physical forces of nature to work, 
and who holds the universe in the hollow of his hand? 

Where is there a being with reason, conscience, 
thought and an immortal soul, who does not at times, 
while viewing a lovely landscape, perusing a pleasing 
book, or listening to some grand old song or hymn, drift 
away to a dim, unreal past, and see, hear, or feel that he 
has heard, seen or felt these same realities thousands of 
years before in a different stage of life and in another - 
form? A trance, a dream, a momentary vision flits 
by and gives a glimpse we know not how, or why or 
when. 

Is this the germ memory given to our spawn that was 
fashioned by the Divine hand when He laid the Tremadoc 
beds of our earth at creation's dawn? Have these germs 
m embryo state kept these memories alive during the 
long aeons of time that have circled away since those 
far-off eras of our past existence? Have they been 
borne as spores of atomic dust o'er continents, seas, and 
isles by the gentle winds or storms, those fleet hand- 
maidens of God's messengers of our planet, and the fair 
ambassadors of changing climes and seasons? We 
know they visit all parts of the earth, we know not 
whence they came, or whither they go. They fill all 
space and the electric force pervades all nature and per- 
meates the atomic germs of all life. There is no vacuum, 
for it IS abhorrent to nature and nature's God. 

The more we study nature and comprehend the won- 
ders revealed, the nearer we approach perfection. We 
harness the elements and make them our servants. Wind, 
lightning, heat and water do our bidding. They are 
dutiful servants and cruel masters. By their aid we 
conquer a barren waste and make it bloom and prosper. 
We catch the rays of the sun and by chemicals transfer 
the shadowy images of things for our picture galleries. 



350 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

By the aid of the electric spark we converse with the 
denizens of distant continents and isles. And by chain- 
ing these same elements great burdens are lifted and 
borne over land and sea, guided and controlled by a 
single hand. With our breath we can speak against a 
sensitized, chemically prepared plate of glass and with 
the sound of our voice produce upon its face beautiful 
flowers and forms, thus showing how the Great Creator, 
with His breath, called things into existence at His 
will. 

It is an ancient truism, " where there is a will there 
is a way," and none knows this better than the close 
student of nature. Have the will, then seek the way. 
All great inventions for the benefit or destruction of 
man have thus been brought about. The mind Is cen- 
tered on one thought and the will is bent to carry or 
perfect that thought and render it visible to the eye 
and touch. 

We cannot fathom the depths or look into the inner 
workings of nature. The thoughts that come to us 
are moulded by a higher power that we know not of. 
Our great armored vessels, the rawhide shield of the 
savage, are but the reproductions of the bony coverings 
of the armadillo, the turtle and the crocodile trans- 
ferred in a different form to subserve the same purpose 
and lifted to a higher plane. Try as we may, we find 
nothing new under the sun. All has been created and 
adopted in some form ages and ages agone. We make 
nothing new, only improve the old, and make it more 
adaptable to our present use. We have garnered only 
from a bygone age the accumulated wisdom that has 
been stored away in the minute cells of gray matter of 
our brains; and as necessity, the mother of invention, 
called it forth, do we apply it. 

We see birds and animals perform feats and do things 
seemingly from instinct that closely resembles reason, 
and we sometimes think that they are endowed with this 
higher faculty of the human mind. I have watched the 
bower birds build their beautiful dance halls, smooth the 
floors and carpet them with variegated fragments of 
colored leaves and shells, and have watched the females 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 351 

arrange themselves around the walls, to see the males 
dance and caper and show their gaudy feathers and 
bright plumage in all their glory for their admiration. 

I have seen the birds of paradise and the lyre birds 
clear the jungle grass from spaces several hundred feet 
long, making open roads, wide and clear, for the females 
to stand and view with unobstructed vision their flights 
from one hanging limb to another at the farther ends 
of these roads, and seen them sail from one to the other, 
in graceful flight, whirling and displaying each tinted 
plume and feather to the admiring gaze of their watch- 
ing female friends, and then sail down and receive the 
plaudits and caresses of the chosen one. 

For hours I have gazed at the pheasants, the pea- 
cocks, prairie chickens and the wild turkeys strut and 
spread their tails and gay plumage to their females ; 
and the questions would naturally present themselves 
to the mind of any observer, do we possess the same 
attributes as these birds, in a more exaggerated form, 
or have we simply imitated them.? Yet there are mill- 
ions of our people who have never witnessed nor even 
read of these bird dances, and who, thousands of miles 
away from the habitats of these winged denizens of 
the wilds of forest and plain, amid the busy crowded 
marts of trade and commerce, mimic their every motion 
and act, and would fly if possible. 

Is it not highly probable, yea, possible, that our 
atomic-germs had to pass through the thousand dif- 
ferent stages, from the monerian to the plane upon 
which we now stand, before we were sufficiently educated 
for the purpose of our Great Creator.'' We had to 
have a beginning, and we slowly and constantly ascended 
from that far-off' protozoan plane to the " Now." 

To stand on this intellectual plane, in this broad 
reasoning era of the eighth day of creation, and under- 
stand in a manner the workings of our Creator, we 
had to rise through vast aeons of change. To make 
my meaning clear, I present you the following as an 
exemplification of my views. It will give you my ideas 
fully, and is addressed to my wife, with the love of the 
ages. 



352 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 
THE IMMORTALITY OF LOVE! 

Sweetheart, did you know that scientists say, 

By a process weird and strange, 
We sprang from conches, to Catarrhine monks, 

And thence to Man by law of "change"? 

That somewhere, in the aeons agone. 

In an age that no one knows. 
Our microsomes and chromosomes 

From protoplasms rose? 

When testa on the protozoan plane. 

We dwelt in cellular forms 
As grapholites, or trilobites. 

We felt azoic storms. 

How we clung to each in that Laurentian age 

And grew in lapse of years; 
How at a stroke our senses woke 

In thrill of hopes and fears. 

When we were tadpoles, or boneless fish, 

In Paleozoic time, 
And side by side on ebbing tide. 

We sprawled through ooze and slime; 

Or fluttered with many a caudal swish 

O'er depths of Cambrian fen; 
My heart was rife with joy of life, 

I loved you even then. 

Then mindless we lived, and mindless we loved, 

Mindless at last we died; 
And deep in rift of caradoc drift 

We slumbered side by side. 

The ages came and the ages fled, 

The sleep that held us fast 
Was riven away in newer day, 

Our night of death was passed. 

We woke amphibians, tailed and scaled. 

As drab as dead man's hand; 
We lay at ease 'neath Trias trees, 

Or trailed through mud and sand; 

Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet, 

Writing a language dumb. 
With never a spark, in the empty dark. 
Or hint of life to come. 

Yet happy we lived, and happy we loved. 

And happy died once more; 
Our forms were rolled in clinging mould 

On neocomian shore. 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 353 

The world turned on in the lathe of time. 

The " hot lands " heaved amain ; 
We caught our breath, from womb of death. 

And crept into life again. 

We left our tails and our saurian scales 

In the Pleocene main, 
And caught in rift of glacial drift 

We sank to sleep again. 

Thus life by life, and love by love, 

We passed 'round circle strange; 
And breath by breath, and death by death. 

We followed the law of change. 

Until light and swift through the jungle's rift. 

We sped in airy flight. 
Or breathed in balm of fronded palm. 

And slept in moonless night. 

There came a time in the cycle of change, 

From out the mindless voids, 
The shadows broke and we awoke. 

Changed into anthropoids. 

And oh! what beautiful years were these, 

Our hearts clung each to each. 
Our life was filled, our senses thrilled 

With first faint dawn of speech. 

Then I was thewed like an auroch bull 

And tusked like great cave bear. 
And you, my sweet, from head to feet. 

Were gowned in glorious hair. 

And deep in the gloom of a fireless cave. 

When night fell o'er the plain, 
And moon hung red o'er river bed 

We crunched on bones of slain. 

While dwelling thus on the cavern wall 

The levin flash would play; 
Fair reason came with subtle flame 

And woke a newer day. 

I watched the lightning shatter the seared pine. 

And fire his lofty dome; 
I caught a spark from blazing bark. 

And lit my cavern home. 

I polished a stone to the cutting edge. 

And shaped with brutish craft; 
I broke a shank from woodland dank. 

Fitted it head and haft: 



354 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

I hid me close by the reedy tarn, 

Where mammoth came to drink; 
Through brawn and bone I drove the stone 

And slew him on the brink. 

Then loud I howled through the moonlit waste, 
Loud answered our kith and kin; 

From west and east, to bloody feast, 
The clans came trooping in. 

O'er joint and gristle and padded hoof 

We fought and clawed and tore, 
And cheek by jowl, with many a growl, 

We talked the combat o'er. 

I carved that fight on a reindeer bone. 

With rude and hairy hand; 
I pictured his fall on cavern wall. 

That men might understand; 

For we lived by blood and the right of might 

Ere human laws were drawn; 
And the age of sin did not begin 

'Til our brutal tusks were gone. 

Time sped on in the law of life, 

'Til o'er the nursing sod 
The shadows broke, our souls awoke. 

In strange dim dream of God. 

And that was a million years ago. 

In age that no man knows; 
And here to-night in raiment bright 

We sit where lamplight glows. 

Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs. 

Your hair as dark as jet; 
Your life is new, your years are few. 

Your soul untried, and yet 

Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay 

And scarp of Purbeck flags; 
We have left our bones in Bagshot stones 

And deep in coraline crags. 

Cities have sprung above the grikes 
Where hairy cave-men made war; 

The engine shrieks across the creeks 
Where mummied mammoths are. 

Our life is old and our love is old. 

And death will come amain; 
Should it come to-day, what man can say 

We shall not live again? 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 355 

Despite the blights, we will climb the heights 

That shade our dim pathway, 
And rise again to higher plane. 

When rid of mortal clay. 

God wrought our souls with the Tremadoc beds. 

And furnished wings to fly; 
He sowed our spawn in the world's dim dawn, 

I know they cannot die. 

Then as we go to luncheon here. 

O'er many dainty dish, 
Let's drink anew to time when you 

And I were boneless fish. 



That all things on this earth are subject to change, 
we are all aware, for it is subject to direct proof; time 
never pauses in his onward flight, and we see his ravages 
on every hand. There is nothing surer than that all 
things must change, either for better or for the worse. 
As we change from the lower to the higher order, we 
approach nearer to the attributes of our Creator ; we 
gather more and more wisdom. We had to pass through 
all the forms of the animal kingdom before we were 
fitted to understand God's laws. 

The Son of God, born of the Blessed Virgin, had to 
take upon himself the sinful form and spirit of man, 
and feel all his weaknesses and changing nature before 
He could accomplish the work of redemption, the work 
His Father set Him to do. Is not this a living, a real 
proof set before us.? 

No man is employed by another to take charge of 
any business, and perform the duties required, unless 
he is familiar with what he has to do. And he has first 
to learn those duties before he is competent to perform 
them, and someone must teach him first, and give him 
understanding. 

And it is my opinion that thus God has created and 
taught us and raised us from the lower to the higher 
plane. He has raised us from the lower order of the 
fauna, up through all the grades, to the present high 
plane of intelligence, and when we leave this mortal 
frame that we now inhabit as man, the atomic spark, 
the living soul, will take its place in the vast interstellar 



556 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

regions of space to do the bidding of our great Creator. 
We are educated on earth so as to be prepared for the 
performance of those duties. He shall assign us in 
the next stage or plane that He places us upon. I 
think he prepares us here for our future duties just as 
the child is prepared by his teachers to take his place 
in this life. So God, by lifting us up from the pro- 
tozoan plane to our present place, has carried us through 
the various grades of life, and fitted us for His great 
work in the vast worlds and starless voids that sur- 
round us. And having passed from the A, B, C of the 
Mollusca to the X, Y, Z's of the differential and in- 
tegral calculus of our graduation in this the high plane 
of reason and intelligence of our eighth day of change, 
we are now ready to be sent as ministers, ambassadors 
or servants to do His work, when we are lifted out of 
the shell that confines our immortal souls. 

We are of the earth earthy, but when we rise from 
this bed of clay to a newer, we will ride on the wings 
of thought far swifter than the rays of light can travel, 
and with our knowledge of every creature of earth, 
perfected from having ourselves inhabited their forms 
in bygone ages, we can better understand and obey His 
orders. 

This, to the man of reason, seems but a clear ex- 
position of the facts, and it does seem to me that the 
deeper we delve into the hidden mysteries of nature 
and the clearer we understand them, the better we are 
educated and fitted for the life yet to come; and as 
we have toiled here and lifted ourselves above the un- 
dulating plane of humanity, so God will lift us to higher 
and fairer realms in the great beyond. So I think it 
our duty to ever try to excel in whatever walk or calling 
we may pursue on this old earth, so that we may take 
our place as near the throne of our Creator as possible 
and not be forced out to the far-off confines or frontiers 
of that unknown region that lies beyond the ken of 
mortal man. 

Darwin's theory of our descent from the protoplasm 
of the Mollusca in the whole is not in conflict with the 
Mosaic account of man's creation, and if he had fol- 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 357 

lowed the dictates of reason, and given heed to the 
still small voice within every man's heart, that atomic 
living spark, that part of the immortal God, the Divine 
Creator, known and recognized by every living, con- 
science-bearing human of the eighth era as the soul; 
that atom that joins us in an unseverable bond to our 
Creator and makes us a part and parcel of Him, his 
work would have been complete. But he laid this aside ; 
he forgot the Divine Ruler, and trusted to the law of 
chance, just as the gambler trusts to the turn of the 
card or the drop of the dice. 

As we journey down life's pathway we should delve 
deep into the mysteries of nature that surround us, 
and try to drink fitting and beneficial draughts and 
prepare ourselves for the eternity beyond. Look at 
the bright side, find good in all mankind, and keep the 
bright spark of charity in our souls burning with an 
ever-increasing ray ; we may have faith and hope, but 
charity alone and unaided covereth, with her broad 
mantle, every sin. The Bible says it covereth the multi- 
tude — not a multitude of sins. 

Let us pause in life's race, brother; look up at the sky light; 

Don't blink at God with the eyes of a mole; 
Come from the gloom of a self -shrouded twilight 

Into the broad open lields of your soul. 

Gaze on the stars, heed their beautiful story, 

List to the wonderful tales they can tell; 
Think on their cause, don't beshadow their glory 

With narrowing thoughts of a man- fashioned hell: 

Say to your brothers and sisters, " I love you " : 

Fill up your life with generous deeds; 
Climb to the heaven of beauty above you, 

But not on a ladder of meaningless creeds. 

Walk in the sunshine, grow in its gladness, 

Gather life's joys as you journey along; 
God will not curse, with an infinite madness, 

Souls that are filled with an infinite song. 

That Being that brought us up from the Tremadoc 
beds, through all the different phases of life, spread 
the broad, beautiful fields of earth before us, set the 
stars in their pathways, carpeted the valleys and plains 



358 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

with the bright flowers of every hue and color, and 
canopied the heavens above in clouds of ever-changing 
dyes, is certainly endowed with wisdom and power be- 
yond our mortal ken. He has brought us up from the 
low, mindless voids, and passed us through every stage 
of existence to fit us for our future duties on far-off 
stellar shores. Yes, He thus educates us here to fill our 
places and perform our several and various 'duties and 
allotted tasks in the Great Beyond. 

He has given us a free hand and let us choose our 
own pathways on this old earth, and we should bend 
every energy of our minds and souls to understand and 
make returns to Him for all His goodness, mercy and 
the blessings extended and bestowed upon us during 
our brief sojourn on this transient earthly shore. God 
would not have passed us through so many changing 
forms, kept us through so many aeons of time, and given 
us such a chance to perfect our education, had He not 
wished us to take our places and perform our duties 
in that higher and better life that our possession of 
the immortal soul entitles us to. For this immortal 
soul of ours is a part of the Incarnate God Himself, 
given to us and breathed into us at creation's dawn 
by God Himself, and it can never die or perish. It 
makes us partakers of that heaven, that home not made 
with hands, that was fashioned for us when He gave us 
our immortal souls. Our education was not given us 
for a brief sojourn on earth, but for all " eternity." 
It had to be thorough and perfect. 

We cannot conceive or comprehend the meaning of 
eternity, for it has no beginning and no end. As an 
illustration, were the smallest humming-bird that floats 
in the atmosphere of this earth to take an atom of the 
dust upon it and bear it to the most distant star that 
twinkles in the heavens above us and be a million years 
making a transit to and from that star ; when that bird, 
with its tiny beak, shall have borne the world away 
eternity would not yet have been begun. 

Is it not reasonable to believe that God, in His in- 
finite judgment, goodness and mercy, knowing all things 
and contemplating the fields of that vast beyond to 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 359 

which we are to be assigned to perform our duties, has 
not brought us up from the lowest stages of all animate 
matter, and so prepared us to take our places in that 
great beyond; so educated us as to fit us to fulfill 
every duty He should call upon us to perform? 

This education given us in this frail life is to last 
us through all eternity, and not merely for that short 
space of time that it would take the humming-bird, 
with its tiny beak, to bear the world away to that dis- 
tant star. We have nothing, you and I, to do with 
our coming into this state, and we have nothing to do 
with our going out of it, for God alone governs this 
advent and this exit. He knows our beginning and our 
end. He has fashioned us for His own ends. He works 
from a perfect principle, hence all His works are per- 
fect. We, knowing that He is all powerful, and cog- 
nizant of all things, should, in common reason, at least, 
assume that He would wish us fully equipped, and would 
so equip us, so educate us, and fit us to perform the 
duties allotted to us in that vast field He has stretched 
out in the great illimitable space around us. 

He has Kfted us and brought us through all the stages 
of life, from the testaceans of the lower protozoan plane, 
up through all the various stages of the kingdoms of 
the animate beings of earth, with the view of fitting us 
perfectly to do His bidding in the life to come. 

Let us take these higher, loftier, and holier views of 
evolution, as it relates to the whole order of the universe. 
The creation of new stars in the boundless space that 
surrounds us is but a repetition of what is revealed 
by our microscope when we attempt to search each 
drop of water that makes the great seas, whose waves 
lash the shores of every continent and isle of our earthly 
abodes. These microscopian atoms of living animal- 
culag that inhabit and fill every drop of water that 
compose the great seas and oceans that roll around us, 
but aid in declaring the glory of God, while the firma- 
ment showeth His handiwork. 

The flaming meteors from the firmament that we float 
in, speed with swift wings into our habitat, and with 
fierce heat dive into our earth and cool and leave for 



360 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 

our admiration a drop of star-dust, in the form and 
shape most pleasing to our wondering minds ; and we 
polish and gather them to our persons, and let them 
sparkle on our fingers, to remind us of that star-dust 
from whence they sprang. These diamonds scintillate 
and sparkle for our delectation, ever reminding us of 
the glories and the grandeur of our future abode that 
may be ours when we rise again, cleansed and purified 
from the dross and scum of our earthly abode, and 
tread the pathway of the angels, beyond the regions 
of the " milky way " that stretches across the vision in 
the domeless beyond. 

No mortal mind can contemplate the wonders and 
glories of that great beyond. We can only catch a 
dim, clouded view of the bright, gleaming stars around 
us, each a grander, larger globe than ours, and we see 
these same stars, or worlds, nightly, canopying the most 
distant ranges of our vision and gathering into groups 
or constellations in the vast unbounded regions beyond. 
In contemplating these same islands of stars in that 
vast ether ocean may we not dream that they are but 
the beginning of the evolution of the stars themselves, 
the gathering together of the " star-dust " of this really 
" boundless ocean of space," yes, of every luminous, 
visible and invisible body, as is shown to our wondering 
gaze in that mysterious " milky way " and mythical 
" pathway of the angels," into one great, grand whole.? 
May not, I repeat, this " star-dust," as the time rolls 
on, gather into one great globe, or world, and by " co- 
hesive force " draw all stars and worlds that now exist, 
from the most minute to the largest, and weld them into 
one great globe or world, on which the Supreme Ruler 
of the universe shall have his abode, and reign over a 
domain and people, perfected and taught, from personal 
experience, from having passed through every form 
and phase of evolution? 

Yes, when this great world of the future, built, framed 
and rejuvenated from all the perfected parts of every 
star, and peopled by beings evolved from the best of all 
living men and women, and purified of every stain and 
made perfect by the great " I Am," then, indeed, will 



MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 361 

these living souls, selected and purified by God Himself, 
be prepared and fitted to take their places, and be the 
companions, ministers and servants of the " King of 
Kings," in that vast, eternal habitat, capable of under- 
standing and comprehending all things, and able to fly 
on the swift wings of purified " thought " to the most 
distant part of God's realm, to do His will. 

And the beings who have been the most observant 
and have closely studied the laws of nature and of 
nature's God, and delved the deepest into the hidden 
mysteries will be chosen, in the natural order of reason- 
ing, to be with Him in person, and remain in closest 
harmony and communion, while those least fitted for 
these closer duties will be relegated to the outer con- 
fines and more distant regions, away from the splendors 
of the palace and paradise of the Great God-Head. 
Yes, those best educated and best suited, who have passed 
from the lowest cell of the protoplasm of the protozoan 
testa, through all the various shades of evolution, and 
studied every phase of life in that state where God 
placed them, will occupy the highest office in that evolved 
world, and dwell in perfect peace and harmony with 
their Great Creator throughout the endless aeons of 
eternity. 



THE END 



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N. MANCHESTER. 1 
INDIANA J ' 






